


Just another Naruto Fanfiction (I don't know what i'm doing)

by alucardismaster



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-02-12
Packaged: 2017-11-28 14:07:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/675246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alucardismaster/pseuds/alucardismaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Okay, i don't know how i got here, or how i'm still sane. All i know is that i was getting chased by some jocks, then i got stabbed in the gut, next thing i know, there's NINJA'S. Yeah, ninja's, don't ask, i'm still trying to figure that one out. And by the way, can anyone explain to me why the heck a 16 year old is knowingly put into a class of 12 YEAR OLD'S? And if you say it's because i'm short NARUTO I WILL KILL YOU! Oh, and don't even get me started on what happens during the full moon. *Sigh* What the heck is going on? OH, and the names Zackariah by the way, Iah or Zack for short, take your pick. Now, then, what? NARUTO, YOU ARE SO DEAD</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

I don’t own Naruto, just my OC’s, and please forgive me, I am doing this as an experiment.  
You know, for some people, being called Kristen Stewart is considered a compliment, or at least being compared to her by use of a simile. But to someone like me, I took it as an insult and a warning that I needed to work on moving the muscles in my face. Unfortunately, I had to have a mirror to work on those expressions, but fortunately, I could work on moving the muscles in my arm right at the moment the asshole said that. His nose is broken now, and that is the reason why I’m running at the moment.  
Where exactly am I running to you ask? My aunt Vivian’s house. Why not my parent’s you ask? Because they aren’t in the picture at the moment. No, not in the whole orphaned child sap act, they’re just literally not in the picture, haven’t been since I was seven. Not in the picture as in they don’t give a damn about me unless they want to come around for money to blow down in Atlantic City or the good ole Sin City. I’m sixteen now, but you wouldn’t know unless Aunt Viv hadn’t made me shave my face regularly. Being 4’5 and a sixteen year old boy is not a good mix in a highschool occupied by a bunch of assholes. I huffed and turned my head over my shoulder to see Jacob Styles suddenly lunge at me from two feet away.  
I dodged to the left quickly and brought my left arm behind me 120 degrees and felt a jarring quake in my elbow as I felt it connect with his cheekbone. Jacob let out a hrmph noise and fell down, I didn’t bother looking where at, I just tried to hit mach 5 as I burned down Oak lane. The houses were becoming less and less spaced together and started to grow farther and farther apart with every block. Any second now I would see Turkey Road come up and take a right, then it was five more blocks to freedom. I know for a fact that the front door was unlocked, and I also know that Aunt Viv is out of town at the moment.  
“Get back here you little shit!” Some guy yelled. “Wait till we get our hands on you little FAG!” Another threw in. I raised up my hand and gave them the universal rude gesture, then lowed my hand and put it into my coat pocket and found my house key attached to a foot long lanyard I had sewn into for just this case. Been caught on the front porch trying to pull my key out of my backpack, got plenty of bruises out of that one, they caught a bloody lip and almost broken arm. I burst into a Cheshire cat like grin when I saw Turkey Road come up and hopped over the culvert on the side of the road and then hopped over the other one to save a few seconds. My feet slide on the slice pavement and my knees buckles slightly. It had sprinkled for an hour around lunch today.  
I had a little under half a mile to go before I hit Aunt Viv’s house, I had to go around two bends and up one hill that was surrounded by woods, a lot of woods. I went around the first bend, it was long and steep and almost did a 90 degree turn, it would be a bitch getting up with the slick pavement, but luckily they’re many paths that go around these bends, and I know most of them. Today I’m going to utilize trail F, and now I just turn left. Hey, I rhymed, and I’ll soon be home in no time. Okay, time to stop being an idiot.  
The trail showed partial use, a slightly worn line between the trees on the ground. this was the outer edge of the woods, so the tree’s were newer, smaller. And on this trail it’d take me six minutes to get halfway to home, then it would be eight minutes to get home, as long as they didn’t pull up the car. I made them ditch it when I went down Highway five, then suddenly turned around and went down a side road, they had to stop in the middle of traffic and a cop was nearby. The car was an SUV, and I’m sure that it was full of football players. I had punched Billy Huggins in the nose around sixth period, and when seventh ended I stuck out of the school through a window in the back of the school, that threw the bastards off until a cheerleader saw me running out the side road. Next thing I know, I’m running down Highway five with a SUV trailing behind me and the horn blaring. That was a good thirty minutes and six resting stops ago. Damn it, and I forgot my bike at school, fucking assholes. They just had to park by the bike rack out front.  
I stopped about thirty feet away from the road and leaned up against a thin tree and took a deep breath. The weather today was just barely above cold as balls, around fifty eight degrees, and this wool coat was really making it feel warm. I moved my messager bag to where I could reach inside and unbuckled the flap. Reaching into it I found my sweating water bottle. Smiling, hey I’m working my facial muscles, I pull it out and unscrew the cap and take a huge swig.  
Breathing again, I took another swig and then screwed the cap back on and put the bottle in the bag. Taking a few more breathes, I finally pushed off the tree and started running again. I stopped slightly at the edge of the road and looked both sides, when I saw a slight flash of silver and blue, crap the school colors. I booked it down the road and didn’t bother looking back. Eight minutes, eight more fucking minute. “FEET DON’T FAIL ME NOW!” I shouted aloud.  
“There he is!” One of the idiots shouted. Then I heard a slamming and a revving of an engine.  
“OH SHIT!” I yelled again, then tried to go for an extra burst of speed. Damn it, damn it. Where the hell are those other paths? I heard a slight squealing of tires but didn’t bother to look back. I heard the engine rev again and it sounded like it was getting closer.  
One of the assholes did a cowboy whoop then yell. “RUN YOU LITTLE FAGGOT!” Oh for the love of, you tell one girl that you’re gay to get her to leave you alone and the next thing you know someone clever enough tapes a bundle of sticks to your locker and slashes your tires in the same day.  
I jump over the right side culvert to a slight clearing in between the woods and culvert. This way those assholes couldn’t try to run me over. Five more minutes, no wait I see the lightning struck tree coming up, two more minutes. The SUV pulls up along me on the road, I glance at it to see something get chucked out the window. I try to lean forward more but it hits me in the shoulder and knocks me off balance for a few steps. “ARRGH, ASSHOLES!” I yell at them, catching another object being handed to the bastard that threw the first one. Is that a… no way, a goddamn BRICK?! He throws it and I dive forward and it misses me. “Hah, you missed you dumb fucking shit.” I throw at him.  
“SHUT UP!” he yells, then he’s handed another one. “Get closer Charlie, I’m gonna nail this cocksucker.”  
“TRY YOU ILLITERATE SIMIEAN!” I yell at him, then he throws the brick. I turn towards it and stick my arms out and catch it. I raise the brick up and glare at them as I get closer and closer to my driveway. “You know what? I take that back.” I tell him, then I throw the brick back at him, but ahead of his direct path. It sails in an arc and the SUV catches up with it. The brick hits him in the forehead and sends him back into the SUV. The car swerves slightly and comes to a skidding halt. “THAT’S AN INSULT TO SIMEANS!” I yell back as I laugh and continue on. I started running faster when I saw the beat up driveway. I heard the car start up again as I turned into the driveway. So close… So close.  
I risked a look back at the SUV and saw it turn into the driveway. I looked forward and saw the house looming closer and closer. They’re really three ways to get into the house, the door on the side garage, the back door that was easy to get to since it was attached to a open air rock patio that lead out to a pool, and of course the front door. I started running across the lawn and my foot hit the little concrete runway in front of the steps in a few strides. Within six more strides I was up to the door and had the key in the lock. My had took a few seconds to turn the key, and as I heard it click open the door open I also heard the SUV pull up to the end of the driveway at the side garage and some doors open. “SHIT!” I curse. I quickly pull out the key and push the door inward, I heard a yell and see the appearance of a jock running up the sidewalk that leads up to the front door.  
I jump into the house and quickly turn around to see the jock running up the steps. “Don’t you dare close-” I cut him off by slamming the door and then locking the dead bolt in place. Then the door thuds and I hear him banging on it with his hand. “FUCKING FAGGOT!” he yelled loudly.  
I lean over to the side and look out the small glass side. “Think of a better insult you moron.” I taunt him. He slams his fist into the glass but I just grin and turn around and am greeted by the familiar parlor of the two story house. The big stairs that are on the right wall and then wrap up to the left. The office to the right of the staircase in a separate room. The dining room in the left and straight ahead is the living room with a hallway in between that leads to Viv’s room to the right and the kitchen, informal dining and living room and garage. I race upstairs and then take a left to go to my room at the end of the hall.  
I get to my room and immediately go to my bed and throw my bag onto it and then go to the window that overlooks the end of the driveway. Pushing the black out curtains aside I see six other jocks leaning against the car, well, the one I hit with the brick yes, the others were milling around looking angry and stupid. The jock that was banging on the door earlier came up to the SUV and started yelling at the others. “Oh, please do something stupid.” I beg as I pull apart the curtains further and pull up the blinds to get a better look as I back away towards my dresser. My hand rested on the top drawer handle as I watch the lead jock lean through an open window of the SUV and then he pulled out a baseball bat. “Oh, thank you.” I say aloud looking up at the ceiling.  
Gleefully, I quickly pulled open the drawer and my eyes automatically rested upon the black leather gun case in the middle of the drawer. I pulled it out and placed it on top of the dresser and unzipped it, then opened the flap all the way. Resting upon red dyed rabbit’s fur was a aged and blued Webley Fosbery Automatic revolver. The zig-zag grooves etched into the eight shot cylinder looked seamlessly perfect, the polished oak handle gleamed darkly. Smiling, I picked it up and pushed the top half back by the part of the barrel closest to the cylinder. The hammer cocked backwards and then snapped forward again, the hammer in the rear back position.  
The Fosbery, or Fos as I called it, originally belonged to Uncle Leo, Viv’s ex husband. He was a avid gun collector, and this was a gem to find. But when Viv divorced him shortly after I came here, she won it in the settlement, she asked for it because she asked me which one I liked best. Leo was a douche and an ass, so no hard feelings. The Fos was made in 1903 and chambered in .38 ACP, not the stopping power of the .455 Webley round, but hey, take what you get. I heard another yell and grinned as I went to the window and put the Fos on the sill and opened it slowly.  
“HEY!” one of the jocks shouts. I smile and wave at them, then lean over and pick up the Fos. I sit on the sill with one leg up and resting on it to block the view of the Fos. “Think you’re so smart you little FAG!” one of the jocks yells.  
“Smarter than you?” I ask with a grin, I look up in mock contemplation and shake my head. “Then yes I do.”  
“You’re DEAD! You HEAR ME?! DEAD!” the one with the bleeding forehead yells, I see Jacob styles stand up beside him, he had a lovely little road rash on his cheek. He’s holding a brick in his hand and starts to pitch his arm back.  
I quickly pull out the Fos and aim it at the front yard and fire it in one swift motion. The shot echoes through out the room and the space around, the Fos flips upward slightly and kicks the cylinder backward, cocking it again and rotating the cylinder. See the use for the grooves now?. The jocks hit the ground and Jacob drops the brick. I grin and move it to point it at the lead jock. “Now, I suggest you all get in your fucking car, and get the hell off my Aunt’s land.”  
“Th…those are just blanks.” Jacob yells and stands up. The others all get up and do an agreement chant.  
“Oh really?” I ask, then motion with the Fos. “Look that way.” I tell them. They do and see the small dirt slide and then crater in the earth about 10 yards away. “Now, the first one was real, but the others may be blank.” I say shrugging my shoulders in the ‘maybe/possibly/whatever’ way. “But then again,” I smile wickedly. “Maybe not.” Within seconds, they all load up and drive off. “Hnn, though so.” I say gleefully happy, then get off the sill and close the window with hand and put the blinds and curtains back in place. I turn back to my dresser and hit the latch on the left side of the gun and the pull the barrel forward. It pops open and hinges like a door, the middle of the cylinder pushes up slightly, but I stop it about halfway before the rest of the bullets could be ejected. I grab the still warm casing and pull it out.  
I put the casing on the dresser and look down into the drawer and see an open case of .38 bullets and pluck one and load it into the spent chamber and then close the gun. Then the phone decides to ring. Sighing I put the Fos back on the case and race out of my room after grabbing my backpack and down the stairs and head to the kitchen and grab the phone that sits on the center island. I didn’t own a cellphone, didn’t see a point. It allowed people to find you easier, I.E, my parents. And smart phones turned people dependent and dumb. Besides, what the hell is wrong with talking to people face to face or over a damn phone instead of texting? I pick up the phone and press accept. “Hello?”  
“Zachariah Isaac Squire, you best tell me what the hell you did to deserve In School Suspension in six seconds before I come home early and make you live out in the empty jacuuzi!” Aunt Viv says dangerously. Viv’s a lawyer that specializes in corporate stuff, so her pay is good, but she’s away a lot on her job around the world. If she used my whole name, then damn she is pissed.  
“Hey Viv, who’s Naples?” I ask calmly as I go the fridge and pull out a can of V8 fusion.  
“Did you hear a damn word I said?” she asks.  
I sigh and open the can and take a sip. “Billy Huggins said that I looked like Bella Swan, well actually it was Kristen Steward, but he basically went to twilight on the reference.” I took another sip.  
Viv sighed. “Alright, I’m starting to see a good reason, but why exactly did he say that you look like Kristen Stewart?”  
I sigh again. “Because I have no facial expression and I’m going to end up screwing a sparkly Fairy.”  
Viv barked with laughter but ended up coughing. “Alright…alright… hah. Damn I needed that. Alright, you’re off the hook. But next time, intimidate the asshole would you, I don’t want your principal to call me again. One, she’s a dumb bitch. And Two, it scared me like the first time.” my heart skipped a beat slightly when she mention the first time someone called about me to her.  
I lean against the fridge and sigh. “Yeah, sorry. Didn’t mean for that to happen.” I hated thinking about it. Just like I hated my parents every damn time they came around demanding money, or threatening Viv to sue her for custody of me every time she said no. It reminded me every time about what they did, what they forced me to do. God, I need a fucking therapist, or a big roll of bubble wrap. After all, therapy is expensive, bubble wrap is cheap.  
“Yeah, me too.” She says. Reminding me of how much we both really don’t talk about, me being here. We ignore it, for both our sakes. I deny that I ever lived anywhere else when around her, and she doesn’t talk about never wanting to be a parent, never wanting to deal with a kid. Especially a damaged kid that would possibly require actual emotion to take care of. “So, see you next week then. You’ve got food?”  
“Yeah.” I say making a mental list. “I’ve got ramen, pasta, leftover pizza, my basic food groups.” She laughs.  
“Good, take care of yourself, and don’t forget to go to school.”  
“Yeah, and don’t get sold into the human trafficking rings.” I tell her. She laughs and hangs up. I sigh and go to the phone housing and put it there and go to the informal living room and drain the rest of the V8 and head to the TV. I stop and look into the mirror that’s in the other living room that’s visible from the informal living room. It showed a short kid wearing black shoes, lighter tinted black jeans, a grey wool Eisenhower style jacket that’s zipped up and buttoned, the sleeves down to my middle thumbs, wearing fingerless black cloth gloves and with a black hoodie sticking out the back. My light brown/slightly black hair skewed about messily like morning bed head. My black rimmed glasses made my skin look paler than actuality. God, I am the shorter male version of Kristen Steward. I try smiling into the mirror and happily see that my face actually moves, I then wiggle my eyebrows and other ranges facial emotions, proud that I have more than three.  
“Now I can rest in peace.” I joke aloud as I pull my Ipod classic out of my backpack and throw myself onto the couch, enjoying the coldness of the house. Why turn on the heat when you love the cold? Sighing, I turn on my Ipod and put my earbuds and start my Mindless Self Indulgence playlist. I needed to look at my arm, anh, do it later.  
-Next day-  
I pulled on my fingerless black gloves and shook my head to Skrillex ‘With your friends (long drive)’. Today’s Saturday, that means it’s my day for target practice and just practically a excuse to walk around outside and listen to music. I pulled on my wool coat over my XL brown Henley style long sleeve shirt. It was in the low sixties with wind chill today, so I didn’t need to zip up my coat. I pick up the Fos, still in the gun case, and with car place it in my messager bag alongside eight boxes of ammo stacked on the far side. Then came my portable speaker, my over the ear headphones, and a small box full of metal full moon clips made to hold eight shots.  
You just load the bullets in through the inside and put each one in a groove, then all you have to do is pick up the clip and pop it into the cylinder. I had three already loaded, then a small box full of ten others. My Ipod and ear buds where in my coat pocket, my wallet and balance book in my pants pocket. Out of sheer paranoia I brought along my Ipod charger in my bag, actually, it’s out of sheer force of habit, I always pack it because I use my bag for car trips. So really, it never left the bag unless I wanted to transfer songs onto it. I put in my earbuds and pressed play and soon Ellie Goulding’s playing and I head off. The main trail I use for Saturday’s is behind the house and leads further up the mountain. My spot is the creek that’s about forty minutes hike from here and a few more different trails.  
I grabbed a plastic bag full of cans on my way out and soon started blazing the trail. I had brought my water bottle with a charcoal filter in it this time, never know when you need water. I was halfway through the bottle and nearly nine songs done when I finally reached the creek. The creek itself was about maybe six feet deep and flowed a mild pace, enough to make a soothing running water noise. The banks on each side was a mild mixture of earth, moss and rocks. And about thirty feet away from me was a fallen tree about three feet in diameter and was in the process of rotting, albeit slowly. I walked to it, my feet crunching on some of the bigger rocks. As soon as I got to the log, I paused my Ipod and pulled out my earbuds and put them in my pocket and took my bag off my shoulders and put it down on the tree in the more flattened spot, then unlatched it.  
I didn’t bother taking out the entire case, I just unzipped it and pulled out Fos and then put my bag behind the tree. I put the cans in the trees and sit on the tree and try to shoot them out. Grabbing the seven inch barrel I pushed back on the gun and it went backwards, then I let go and it snapped back into place. I was about to lean over and grab the plastic bags of cans when I heard shuffling, then a few snickers. Shit, who the hell followed me? Crap, it may be the local fish and game guy, he’s passed threw a few times. I quickly leaned over the tree and put Fos back into my bag and pulled it closer to the trunk and stuffed it between the big dirt clump that was still attached to the roots. Then I turned around and layed down on the log and put the cans on the opposite side. Putting my hands behind my head, I laid down and stared up at the sky, it was gray and bleak with clouds, in my opinion, a perfect day.  
I concentrated on the noises and pinned down that they where coming from the trail I used, more than two, but not so sure of the exact number. “Heh, looks like you were right Billy.” I hear the familiar voice of Jacob Styles, oh damn it all, and I just put of Fos.  
“Tholdh You,” I heard a nasally clouded voice, like someone who recently had his nose smashed in. Well, la di da. Billy Huggins. I bolt up right and look back at where I came from and sure enough, here he comes, along with four other guys, one being Jacob Styles. He sneers at me with a gauze packed nose, his eyes black and cheeks swollen. “Founth you littlth shith.” He says mockingly. He then pulls something out of his pants pocket about a foot long, the top part looked silver and the bottom half was… a sheath? “Guesth whath thith ith?”  
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “Your spine?”  
“Shuth up you dickthles fath!” he yells.  
I snort. “Yeah, five football players over 5’6 against one guy who barely almost makes five feet, and I’m the one whose dickless.” I launch myself up from the log and land on my feet. That’s when two of the jocks come running up to me with a war cry, both arms stretched outward like giant pincers.  
I wait in the spot I was in, my body relaxed and ready, then right as the faster of the two gets to me, I quickly step forward, force my right hand into a rigid spear, and then bury it into the jocks throat. He makes a choking gurgling noise as he continues on running into my hand. I step to the right of him, then raise my left leg, and bring it back and kick the back of his knee and he goes down. I bring up my left arm and then elbow him in the back of his neck. He goes falling face first into rocks and I step away from him and start bouncing from the balls of my feet, shifting my weight to each foot.  
The other jock reaches me with another enraged cry and throws a loose punch at me, I step forward into his arm and bring up my left arm underneath his and raise it up, then I bring up my right hand and jump up slightly and slam the heel of my palm underneath his nose. It crunches and gives and he goes stumbling forward slightly. I bring up my left leg and then down on his back, he goes down and lands on his hands and knees. I step towards him and bring up my arm ready to strike him, but instead something strikes me. To be more exact, two something’s, big ass football players that are in a running tackle.  
I go flying in their grasp and few feet, but then everything blacks out slightly as my head hits a big rock. I groan and then feel myself get dragged by my arms. Next thing I know, I’m looking back up at the sky and my face feels wet.  
“Is he awake?” one of the jocks ask. I feel something connect with my jaw and my vision burst into stars, then it clears. I gasp and taste something coppery and sticky in my mouth. “Now he is.” Another one says. I look down and see Billy standing over me, to the sides I see two jocks that had tackled me holding me down, Jacob to my right. I’m surprised my glasses stayed intact and on my face.  
Billy leans down closer to me and pulls up the silver and black thing, the silver part was clearer now, and my eyes widened when I saw it. It was intricate handle, shaped like brass knuckles, and at the top was a silver cracked skull with a wide and gaping mouth. Oh god. “You seeth ith now?” I don’t speak, instead I spit blood in his face. he screams and reels back, then he kicks me in the knee. I grunt in pain and glare at him. “FAGGGGGGG!” he screams.  
“Hope he better not give you AIDS.” Jacob quips. Billy glares at him, then unlatches the sheath and pulls on the handle, then I see the rest of the silver blade. my eyes opened wide in shock and Billy sneered. The blade was 9 inches long, pitted and rough, made to look like it was created by hand. It had a grooved slit below the top of the blade that stopped and curved back three inches before it reached the end.  
Billy pinched the skull at the end of the handle and pulled back on it slightly, a segment of the metal pulled backwards and revealed that the slit was actually the space in between the actual knife and a smaller one that slid on top. The real blade was hooked at the end. “Scared yet?” a jock asks?  
“Go fuck yourselves.” I tell them all venomously.  
Billy steps forward and then he grips my shirt and pulls it up roughly. “Keep talkthing fag.” He says, then he grips the top of my pants.  
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!” I shriek at him, my voice cracking in fear. No… NO, not again.  
Billy puts the tip of the blade on the button of my jeans and sneers at me. “You ain’t no man fag.” He says in surprisingly clear english. His face looks warped, sick and twisted. “So you don’t need this.” He then unzips my jeans. I start to thrash about and then he punches me in the face.  
My vision goes blurry but I try to twist in the jocks grasp, I lash out with my foot but Billy steps on my ankle. “STOP IT!” I cry out loud, then try to twist my arm out. “STOP IT, STOP IIIITTTT!!!!” I yell again. Billy sneers and then I feel him unbutton my jeans and place the blade on my stomach.  
“Come on man.” Jacob says his voice wavering. “You’re just supposed to scare him, you know, for shooting at us.”  
“SHUTH UP!” Billy yells, he steps off my ankle and I take the chance to knee him in the groin, my knee comes in contact with something hard and solid as Billy grunts. SHIT! a CUP, REALLY? He then kicks me in my thigh twice. “LITTLTH BICH!” he yells.  
I try to breath, then feel a pool of hot sticky metallic blood in my mouth. Then an idea hits me, I turn my head to Jacob and spit the blood at his face. it hits his eyes in a wide spray and he screams and lets go, I then bring my right over my and punch the other jock in the nose, he lets go and gasp for breath. I push up against the log, and the next thing I know something hits me in the stomach. I don’t feel anything at first, but my hand goes to my stomach automatically, I feel something cold and hard brush against my fingers. The breath rushes out of my lungs and I look down in shock. Sticking out of my stomach was Billy’s silver knife, the skull grinning up at me.  
“WHAT DID YOU DO BILLY?!” Jacob screams. I look up as blood starts to flow out of my stomach and onto the blade, Billy steps back slightly, a absent look on his face. That look, that look set off something, I don’t know what, but some sort of rage. Before I knew it, I had grabbed ahold of the skull and pulled it out, searing pain rushes trough me, then a truck load. I gasp and feel blood rush out my throat and a trickle down my mouth. Then, I stab the blade into Billy’s thigh. He screams right away as I pull it away, a small torrent of blood began to flow. I put my hand on the log and slowly and shakily, I breathe through the pain and get up.  
“Fuck…fuc.” I gasp as I hobble over to the roots. “Fucking.” I say slowly as I reach the end of the log and lean against it.  
“Shit man!” a jock exclaims.  
Billy screams again and that sends me over the edge. I lay against the tree trunk and within a moment I’m reaching into my bag and grasping Fos by it’s oak handle and pulling it out. I don’t know how I got to my feet, or how my bag was clutched by it’s strap in my other hand with the skull knife. I see Billy getting pulled to his feet by Jacob and the other jock and the two I hit earlier are getting to their feet. I raise up Fos and sight it on Billy’s chest. “FUCKING BASTARDS!” I yelled with all my might, then I pulled the trigger twice. Billy’s chest blossom’s at his shoulder and by his stomach in a flower of blood. Jacob drops him and looks at the body, the other jocks run off. I fire off three more rounds after them, then turn to Jacob.  
He looks at me, then faints. I shakily lower Fos and look at him, then sigh painfully. “Pussy.” I say, then drape my bag over my shoulder carefully, wincing in pain. Something kept it away, like a dull ache. Was it adrenaline? Or the lack of blood. I looked down at my stomach and saw my shirt covered in blood, the handle of the blade now smeared. Wincing again, I put the skull knife in my pocket and put my hand around the blade and applied pressure. I cough once and leaned over, then stumbled. blood dribbled off my chin and onto my shirt. I started walking, shuffling, stumbling, I don’t know why, I just did.  
I didn’t go down the trail, that much I was sure of. I don’t know how long I walked, I barely saw anything but a slow mist creep up on my eyes. By the time the mist cleared, I was stumbling into a flat clearing with a large tree in the middle. Something… pulled me to the tree. I stumbled closer and closer, and the pain slowly drifted away, the sickly unease I felt earlier was now gone. I felt euphoric, light as a feather. My heart didn’t race, the knife moved and cut me further, I felt nothing. just joy.  
Soon, I was upon the tree, standing there, looking at it’s large glory. Then it hit me. I was going to die. Then, I felt tired, so damn tired. But for some reason, all I could do was laugh. Then I started coughing, blood, lots of it. I looked at the ground and saw black sticky clumps mixed in with the red liquid. Sighing, I looked up at the tree, and the first thing I saw was something sticking out of it near the base. It wasn’t a branch. I stumbled closer and nearly tripped, my shoulder caught me against the tree. I stopped and tried to breath, but coughed. I looked up and took a shallow breath to clear the mist, and then I saw it. the thing.  
It was black at both ends, with a tan round handle in the middle. The end black piece was a giant circle, the other end looked like a crescent moon with a knife poking through the middle of it. The knife, it emitted something, something warm. It called me, it told me to touch it. to grab it. I slowly raised a shakey left hand up, and when my fingers touched it, my body felt better, warmer, less tired. I gripped the handle tightly, and I felt stronger, so strong. Then the tree burst into flames. I let out a yelp and fell backward, pulling the thing with me.  
I landed on my back less than a foot away from the tree, I watched as the flames quickly covered the tree, turning black, white and silver. The leaves crackled and fell, turning to ash way before they reached the ground. I stared at it in wonder, then… then the flames came towards me and began to change. They became less and less flickering, and seemed to turn into a flowing mass, becoming sleek and agile as it formed, then, before I knew it, standing before me was a snow leopard with piercing blue eyes.  
I blinked at it, then I started laughing like a mad man. Then I began to cough more and more, finally, I started to hack and gag on the blood. I finally stopped and looked at the leopard with heavy lidded eyes and smiled. “Sorry kitty cat.” I tell him ruefully as I raise up Fos. “But I’m not gonna become your chew toy.” The leopard growled and jumped as I pulled the trigger three times, each one hit it in the head. A bolt of lightning struck the burning tree, a loud rumble sounded as the rain began to come down. Then the leopard is on me, and my world goes black.  
-Third person P.O.V-  
“So how long till we get there?” Asuma asked as he took in a long drag of his cigarette. He breathed out in a large cloud of smoke, it wafted up and trailed behind him as he and Kurenai continued along the dirt road.  
“Ten minutes subtracted from the last time you asked.” Kurenai responded with a sigh and looked up at the sky. “Think it’s gonna rain again?”  
Asuma took another drag of the cigarette. “Don’t know, but honestly, that last shower was a little weird if you ask me.”  
“Yeah, seemed like a warning of some kind.” She said. “Think it has anything to do with this mission?”  
Asuma shrugged and then threw the cigarette down in front of him and stepped on it, making sure to twist his foot for good measure of putting it out. “Maybe, but I think its just paranoia settling in with old age.” He joked.  
She snorted and punched him in the arm. “I’m serious, what kind of C ranked mission requires two Jonin anyway?”  
Asuma sighed and pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his vest pocket and knocked a fresh one out. “Maybe it’s just for us to kill time before the new genin come in?” he said as he took out a lighter and light the end of the cigarette. “Besides, it’s just a bodyguard job, nothing much to worry about unless you think on it too much.”  
“But still, little bit of an overkill.” She tells him, then suddenly sniffs the air.  
“You smell it to, don’t you?” he asks as they both continue on the road. The smell of burning wood, thick and almost as nauseating as Asuma’s cigarettes hung in the damp air. As did a metallic scent, something all too familiar to the Jonin, the smell of blood.  
“It’s coming from up ahead.” Kurenai says, then draws a kunai. “What do you think happened?”  
Asuma shrugs and takes a small drag from his cigarette. “Never know that until we go and look.” He says boredly, then in a flash, they are both running towards the source of the smell.  
Within minutes of running, they soon came upon a clearing, they stopped and stared at the center, where a large billowing cloud of smoke trailed from it and into the sky, there was no fire, but all that remained was almost a charred stump.  
“What the hell happened here?” Asuma asked as he took a step closer, but stopped when Kurenai swiftly raised up an arm to block him.  
“Look.” She says, not pointing, but motioning with her head. Asuma traced her look to the target and saw what she had, a metallic object glimmering as it stuck out skywards from something on the ground. They both as one carefully stepped closer and closer to the object and the unfamiliar shape, both noticing that the smell of blood was getting stronger and stronger as they both got within range. “What?” Kurenai exclaimed suddenly as soon as the form became clear to her.  
Asuma quickly drew his trench knives and began to look around, scanning the area. The form on the ground was that of a boy laying upon his back, arms and legs spread eagled on the grassy plane, if it wasn’t for the blood trails from his mouth and the handle of a silver trench knife sticking from out of his gut, someone would have thought he was sleeping. “Kurenai, chec-” he didn’t have to say anything really, for his companion was already at the side of the fallen child, looking down upon him with a look of concern and disgust. Asuma was on the other side of the boy looking down at him as he continued to keep an eye out for anyone that could have been held responsible. When he looked down, he saw that the boy clutched the strap of a bag in his left hand, and in his right was an unfamiliar object, it was metal, a long tube attached to a fatter one that had ziz-zags etched into it.  
“Who did this?” Kurenai asked in disgust and pity as she put two fingers upon the boy’s neck. Then gasped in shock, she looked up at Asuma in shock. “He’s alive!”  
Bun ba dun dun! And that’s the end of this chapter. Obviously, I don’t know what I’m doing, just trying something new. All well, tell me how it is and I’ll be grateful. TTYL.


	2. WHAT?!

I don’t own Naruto, just my OC’s, and please forgive me, I am doing this as an experiment.  
“Wake up.” A whispery voice said, the noise caressed my skin like a cool wind. Sending chills up my spine and causing me to stir. “You need to wake up.” It hisses softly. I try to open my eyes but they feel chained together, my chest felt like someone was sitting on, heavy and immobile. My stomach hurt, a slight burning that seemed to radiate inward and spread outward the further it got. Little pricks that just arched off seem to spread. Then I felt something smooth and damp caress the pain away. I groan a little and try to lift my head, or at least move it. “WAKE UP!” the voice yells.  
As if someone slapped me, my eyes opened wide and I took in a deep breath, then the pain, hot and creeping that crashed into me. It drove away my breath, and steered the acidic bile into my mouth.  
“Asuma, hold him down!” I heard a woman’s voice yell as I tried to twist to my side and clear my mouth of the bile, but instead someone firmly grasp my shoulders and pushes me down back onto something soft. I choke on the bile, then another hand turns my head to the side and then my mouth’s empty and my tears are covering my vision. I take in a sickening sweet breath and hiccup. I try to move my arms to wipe away the tears, but the hands move down a little bit further, but thankfully someone puts something soft under my eyes and the tears are patted away. “It’s okay, just breath slowly and take shallow breaths.” The woman says.  
I nod and take a small slow breath, the pain ebbs slightly, but as I exhale it comes back some more. I took in a few more breaths, then I opened my eyes and blinked, then someone puts my glasses on my face. Leaning over me was a woman with large red eyes, a pale heart shaped face with long black hair, and a… a weird metal band over her forehead? I groan a little and try to lean forward a slight bit, but then the hands on my shoulders push a little bit more. I got the message loud and clear, don’t move.   
“Hold on a minute.” The woman says, then she disappears. I turn my head a little and see that it’s a man holding me down, a full beard and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and another weird metal head band. Okay, I’m no slave to fashion, but when the hell did I miss this statement?  
“How you feeling kid?” The man asks me, I look a bit further south and see that he’s wearing a military style flak vest with a large collar.  
“Like I just got stabbed.” I respond raspily, then wince slightly.  
He smirks a little. “Yeah, figured as much. Gotta say though, I’ve seen grown men cry a river with a knife wound like this.” The woman came back at that point, she put her hand behind my head and lifted it up slightly and then I felt cool glass press up against my lips.  
Out of slight experience, I opened my mouth a little and then a little tide of water rush in. After a little bit of waiting and swishing the water around, I bitterly swallowed the water and cleared my throat. My mouth tasted less disgusting. “Thank you.”  
She smiles and tips the glass again, I gratefully take another gulp and swallow it, then she takes away the glass. She looks at the man and nods her head. He takes off his hands and then nods at her. She turns to me and smiles. “My name is Yuhi Kurenai,” she nods to the man. “and this is Sarutobi Asuma. We found you in a clearing with a knife in your stomach.”  
I nod my head and then try to push up with my hands to get a better look at them, but the man stops me and the woman pulls a few pillows behind me and puts them at the small of my back. I lean back slightly and then my head hits the headboard, I wince and grimace in pain. “The way you said your names, family name first then?” they both nod their heads and give me an odd look. “Well, in that case, my name is Squire Zachariah, Zack or Iah please. And thank you for helping me.”  
“Zachariah?” Asuma says with a arched eyebrow. I start to open my mouth to protest but he holds up his hand. “Alright then, Iah, sounds a little less weird.”  
I roll my eyes. “Tell me about, can’t tell you how many people give me that line.” I look around and see that I’m not in a hospital room, I’m in a… motel room? Hotel? “Um, what exactly am I doing here?”  
Kurenai leaned back and gave me an assessing eye. “It’s safer in here then it is at a hospital, less chance of the people who attacked you sneaking in.” she then fixed me a cold gaze. “Now, would you care to explain to us why exactly someone would stab a child?”  
I looked down and saw that I wasn’t wearing a shirt, instead I had a bunch of gauze like wrappings around my stomach, and some weird damp and cold feeling creeped up on me. then something else hit, where are my things? I look around for my stuff, then find it in a chair on the other side of the room. “That’s my stuff right?” I ask.  
Asuma nods then tapes my shoulder. “Answer the question kid, we helped you out, least you could do.”  
“Actually the least I could do would be insult you, try to take my things in the middle of the night and leave.” I pointed out. They both gave me a very ugly look. “Sorry, bad sense of humor. And to tell the truth, I brought some of what happened to me on myself. Well, in a way I did at least, I guess.”  
Asuma rolls his eyes. “Make some sense would ya?”  
I roll my eyes back at him. “Fine, I punched a guy after he insulted me and laid him out. His friends wanted revenge and ended up chasing me till I got to my house while throwing bricks at me, then I scared them off.”  
“And that justifies a knife in the gut?” Kurenai asks.  
I shrug my shoulders. “Apparently the guy I punched thought it would be a good prank to pin me down and act like he was going to castrate me, then he went a little overboard and actually tried to.” They look confused and shocked at my nonchalant attitude to my little predicament. “But I ended up struggling and when I was able to get up, well I think you can pretty much piece together the rest.” Then I look at my bag and see that I can’t find Fos. “Where’s my gun?” I demand.  
Asuma looks at me weirdly, then goes to a desk across the room and pulls out a drawer, and then pulls out Fos by the end of the barrel. “Is that what’s this is called?”  
“Yes, and don’t hold it like that!” I yell at him and wince I pain. UGH, this is going to be annoying, and god am I hungry.  
Asuma places Fos on the foot of the bed slowly and then goes back to the drawer and then pulls out the silver skull trench knife that was previously in my stomach, the skull part was sheathed in the handle. I back away from it a little bit. Asuma turns it in his hand and looks at it. “Huh, cheaply made for sure.”  
“Good enough to cut through my stomach.” I mumble. Kurenai smirks at that one, then picks up Fos by cylinder.   
“Yeah, well, its weird, the knife is cheap but it seems to conduct Chakra greatly.” He continues on. I furrow my brows at them, then Kurenai almost pulls the trigger on Fos.  
“DON’T!” I yell at her, and try to snatch it away from her. She pushes me back and holds Fos up above me. I don’t bother pushing against her, I just eye her with wide eyes. “Don’t pull that.”  
“Why not?” Kurenai asks.  
“You seriously don’t know what a gun is?” I ask them dumbly.   
“No.” they say, then Kurenai looks at it weirdly. “Huh, this can conduct Chakra too.” She looks at Asuma. “Almost like the blade.”  
“Where’d you get this.. gun at kid?” Asuma asks.  
“My uncle bought it. And what the hell is Chakra?” I ask him. They both stop and look at me like I’m stupid. “What?”  
“You don’t know what chakra is?” Kurenai asks in disbelief.  
“NOOOOOO, should I?” They look at each other, then at me, then grimace. Then they spend the next twenty minutes telling me what it is. “So, Chakra is basically just energy that is manipulated by people to be able to create powerful techniques?” They nod. “And you two are ninja’s.” I state. They again shake their head. I pinch myself, then when I still see them, I slap myself. Still there. “I must have hit my head.” I mumble, then try to get up again. Then the lamp next to me separates into two halves. I look at the metal base and see a clean cut through the metal. Then I see Asuma standing next to the nightstand with a glowing weird looking trench knife in on hand. He’s smiling and smoking like a freight train.  
“Still think you’ve hit your head?” he ask smugly. I look at him dumbfounded, then I sigh and lean back into the bed.  
Kurenai holds up Fos to me and shakes it. “Now, mind telling us what this does?”  
I grab Fos by the handle and point it at the opposite wall, then hit the latch and it pops open. I push it all the way till the bullets popped out of the cylinder and landed on the bed in between my legs. I laid down Fos and picked up a empty casing and a live round in each hand. I hold them up to each of them. “Nothing quite as special as your chakra abilities. The gun is just a tool, but it’s useless without these, they’re called bullets.” I turn them around and show the round firing nipples at the bottom. “See these, the hammer on the gun hits the firing pin, the pin hits the nipple on the bottom, then it ignites the powder inside the casing, the ignition builds up pressure and the pressure then pushes the bullet, the lead piece on the other end of this bullet.” I motion to it, then put down the spent casing and pick up Fos and hold up the muzzle to the light and hand it to Asuma. “Look up the barrel and see the grooves in it, those grooves turn the bullet which allows it to travel greater distances and higher accuracy.” Kurenai looks at Fos weirdly, then picks up a bullet.  
“So, how dangerous exactly are these bullets?” she asks.  
I shrug and take back Fos and load a few live rounds into the cylinder. “Well, they aren’t as precise as Asuma’s knives, or by your explanation, as some of those chakra abilities. But with one round, I could make someone’s brains come out the back end of their skull at over 300 yards away. Cause lacerations, crush organs, shatter bones, make a simple wound into a terrible one.” I load the last few live rounds, all in total, three in the chamber, then I close it. “If one of these had been in my gut, I’d be dying a slow and horribly painful death.” Then I lay down Fos and look at the both of them. “And you know what’s strange, almost everyone knows what a gun is, or at least knows the basic shape of one.” Then my stomach growls loudly, and then I feel a nice sharp pain in my gut.  
Asuma smirks at me and then looks at a clock on the far wall. “You know, for someone who doesn’t know what Chakra is, you sure have a ready supply over it.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“Your body is repairing itself faster than a normal human,” Kurenai answers. “in fact your wound is almost healed up as it is. Strange isn’t it.”  
“We need to get going.” Asuma says abruptly, then heads off into the bathroom.  
“What?” I ask looking at the both of them. Asuma comes back in and is carrying my coat and jacket.  
“Well, you need some food, and we need to meet our clients.” Asuma says, then tosses me my clothes. I picked up my shirt and saw that it had a giant vertical hole in the front of it. But surprisingly, there wasn’t a lot of blood, hell, no stain at all. I look at them dumbfounded, then find that there isn’t any stain on my coat. Do you know how hard it is to get rid of blood on wool?  
“How the hell did you get the blood out?” I ask them amazed.  
“Kids shouldn’t use language like that.” Kurenai scolds.  
I gave her the ‘really’/sorry look. “Sorry, but my brain to mouth filters been busted for a while, give a me a little bit to fix it.” She rolls her eyes at me and stands up.  
“You learn plenty of little techniques to get blood out in our line of work.” Asuma says. “Now get your shirt on and we’ll help you out of bed.” I sigh and slowly pull on my shirt, wincing slightly in pain as I flex my arms. After a few minutes of pain and slow movement, I finally pulled my shirt down all the way.  
I looked at the big hole in it and sighed. “Think I could borrow a spool of thread and a needle later?” I ask.   
“Sure.” Kurenai says softly, then goes to my left and softly grips ahold of my arms. “Now, swing your legs over the side and we’ll help you up. You’ve healed enough of your wounds to where it’s only a few centimeters deep instead of the whole knife length. What’s really taking so long is the fact that the curved hook cut along the lining of your stomach. Within a day or so, you should only have a scar.”  
I give her a surprised look as I slowly swing my legs over the side. Then Asuma gets behind me and pushes and Kurenai pulls, and in no time flat I’m on my feet wobbling from side to side. Kurenai steadies me on my feet, then Asuma hands me my jacket.  
“Just button it up to cover the hole, sorry to rush but we need to go.” Asuma says. I nod and put on the coat, then slowly I button the coat, missing the hole a few times, but I got it done. Then came my shoes, that was fun, had to waddle like a penguin just to get into them. Then Kurenai hands me my backpack and Fos. “It’s safer to switch hotels every night instead of using the same one over and over again, less chance of someone coming in and getting the drop on us.” I shrug and put the strap on over my shoulder, then stop and think.  
“Can I load Fos up first, if your lives are so dangerous, might as well level my playing field a little bit.”  
“Fos?” Asuma asks.  
“The gun is called a Webley Fosbery, I just call it Fos for short.”  
“Can you do it while we check out, we need to get to the restaurant by 12:30.” I nod and we all exit the room, then go down a long hall and down a flight of stairs, real fun on those, nearly toppled twice. When we got to the front desk to check out, I pulled out a box of ammo that I had already opened before and loaded up Fos quickly in a corner then snapped it back in place and put it inside of my bag, then we went outside and I knew for sure one thing, we weren’t in Arkansas anymore. Yeah I butchered the line up, so sue me.  
Dirt roads, people dressed in clothes that didn’t look like mine, in fact I was getting a few stairs, yep, I was out of place alright. And what else was different, everything was in Japanese, the signs I mean. I couldn’t understand a damn lick of it. Okay, how the hell did I end up in Japan? Or at least, some time frame of japan. Seriously, what the hell?  
After a lovely walk, more like me waddling at a brisk pace. Again, more weird looks, but hey, I was stabbed with a nine inch blade, give me a break. We finally ended up at some upscale looking restaurant, I guess it’s upscale, looks nicer than the other places around. When we got inside a hostess, I think, met us and then escorted us to a private room, then I got to sit down again in front of a black table and Kurenai ordered some Udon for me to eat. Said it’d be the easiest thing for me to stomach since it was mostly just broth. I don’t give a damn, give me something to eat.  
“You know, it’s weird.” Asuma says as I sip a glass of water.  
“What is?” I ask.  
“The knife that stabbed you.” He says, then takes a sip of his own glass. “It’s not exactly the best quality, some of the metal work is crap. Yet it conducts chakra well enough, and by my guess, that in of itself is odd since you aren’t exactly of this world.”  
I do a spit take and look at him weirdly. “What are you talking about?”  
Kurenai holds up my brown leather wallet and opens it up to my drivers license picture. “We mean this.”  
“Hey.” I protest and try to grab it from her, she just pokes my forehead and pushes me back.  
“Sorry kid, but we had to take it, information is key afterall.” Asuma says boredly. He then grabs my wallet and looks at it. “It says here that you’re from a place called Arkansas in the United States of America.”  
“Yeah, and?” I ask.  
He closes the wallet and hands it to me. “We’ve never heard of this place, cause there is none.” He says calmly.   
“And you don’t know about Chakra, or ninja’s.” Kurenai adds. “And if I made a guess, you probably don’t even know the layout of the lands, or the people in charge or customs around here at all.”  
I look at them, then at my wallet, then sigh and put it up. “So what, not exactly like I know how I got here, or that I’m even here and not dreaming.” Asuma pokes me in the shoulder with a chopstick. “Hey!”  
“That hurt, you’re not in a dream. Unless your under some majorly powerful genjutsu.” He says.  
The udon some comes and then I finally see what it is, noodles, mushroom soup/broth, and a few other tad bites I don’t know. “Genjutsu, that’s the chakra technique involving illusions right?” I ask as I pick up a spoon and take up some broth and blow on it.  
“Yes, and some our powerful enough to even make you kill yourself in order for it to stop.” Kurenai says as she eats a piece of barbequed meat.  
“So after gen, its nin and tai right?” I ask as I sip the soup, umm, that’s good. Asuma started to say something, then the door opens and in steps a large group of people. Asuma and Kurenai quickly get up and I slowly and painfully totter up to my feet.  
The front of the group is an old man of about 60 surrounded by a group of younger men that all looked intimidating and.. well I guess criminal. Most of them had scars and looked hardened, or purposefully intimidating. Then out of nowhere, there’s like a 14 year girl that’s all smiles and happy in some flowery patterened outfit clutching the old guys hand. Okay, gangsters and a little girl, now things are just getting weirder. A snarky haunting laugh echoes slightly, I look around and see that Asuma and Kurenai don’t notice anything, same goes for the lovely little gangster group.  
“Are you the ninja’s from the village hidden in the leaves?” the old man asks sternly. Asuma and Kurenai nods, when the old man doesn’t see me nod, he looks at me oddly. “And who is this child.”  
I hold up my hands in defeat. “I’m just a tag along they found injured on the side of the road, I think I’ll take my food and go to one of the front tables.”  
The old man looks at the ninja’s. “Is he trustworthy?”  
They look at each other then at me, then at the old man. “Yes he is.” Asuma nods. Oh crap.  
The old man looks at the little girl and smiles. “Toka, why don’t you go out front with the boy.”  
The girl smiles up at him. “OKAY!” she says cheerfully loud. She then runs up to me and smiles. “I’m Toka, come on, it’s boring at these meetings.” She then turns to the old man and smiles. “Are Baldy and Toothy coming to?”  
The group smiles at her and two men step out front, one has no hair and a lot of scars on his face, the other has three missing teeth, two on the top and one on the bottom. I turn to Kurenai and give her desperate eyes. She just motions me forward and I step to her, she leans down to my height.  
“Make sure your guns ready, and be careful.” She whispers. I give her the evil eye and bend down and pick up my bowl of udon and slowly bend back up, knife wounds suck ass!  
“COME ON!” Toka says, then pulls on my arm and makes me splash myself with soup.   
“OWW!” I yell as the scolding soup soaks through my shirt and burns my chest.  
“Get going you baby.” Baldy gripes, then comes forward and gives me a intimdating look.  
My eye twitches him and on hand goes down to my bag. “Hey, you wanna see a-”  
“Iah.” Asuma warns. I turn to him and stick out my tongue.  
“Fine.” I tell him, then do a slight march to the door. Then Toka comes skipping down the hall and the other guys are following behind her. We get to the front and a hostess comes along and the guys scare her into giving us a table near the corner, we get there and I slowly sit down.  
“Hey brat, what the hell happened to you?” Toothy asks.  
“Stabbed in the stomach.” I mumble, then take up a noodle with the chopsticks and slowly slurp it down.  
“With what? A chopstick?” Baldy asks ribbing Toothy, they both laugh. I reach into my bag and pull out the trench knife, Asuma put it in there before we left.  
“No, with this.” I tell him wryly. They all have shocked faces as I put the knife back and go back to eating my soup.  
“Ho…how the hell did a midge like you survive that?” Toothy asks amazed. I shrug and slurp more noodles.  
“Are you a ninja?” Toka asks amazed.  
“God no.” I tell her in response, her face deflates and she stands up abruptly.   
“I need to go to the bathroom.” She announces. Toothy and Baldy get up and go after her as she goes to the bathroom that’s in a hallway a little bit past the kitchen and then takes a sharp right. I shrug and go on eating. God I’m hungry.  
After about seven or eight minutes of me eating, I start to wonder where the hell they went to. Okay, I understand that girls take a little bit longer to go to the bathroom, and okay it may be the second step, but come on! Then a strange scent comes along, like blueberries and sugar. I sniff and look around and see nothing, but as I turn my head back I see Toothy and Baldy walking out of the bathroom with Toka in front of them. Only, they looked, different. Fuzzy and unclear. I rub my eyes and blink, but still they look fuzzy and now… see through? What the hell? I slowly get up and look at them, then the smell grows faint, followed by something copperier and…. Is that piss?   
Baldy gets to me first and sits down quietly as do Toothy and Toka. Then it hits me, well, more like it’s whispered to me. Genjutsu. Illusions. Shit. For good measure, I go around the table and kick Toothy in the leg, and in a cloud of smoke and some silly sounded poof, Toothy is gone. “Ninja’s.” I moan aloud and walk to the hall where the bathrooms are. I stop as I hit the corner and see Baldy and Toothy laying down on the floor in a growing puddle of blood with weird looking knives sticking out of their backs, a look of shock and anger on their faces. I back away slowly and start to think of going back to the room and getting Kurenai and Asuma, but instead I hear a loud scuffling noise and some muffled cursing.  
“SHIT! the little brat bit me!” Someone curses from behind the emergency exit.   
I weight out going back for Asuma and Kurenai, and the big group of scary merry men, but then I also balance that thought with the fact that these people are ninja’s, Toka could disappear within a few steps and we’d probably never find her. Or I’d never find her. Wait, Kurenai said something about ninja’s accepting jobs, so that means that this is a job since they said clients. So could the job be to protect Toka? I heard a muffled screech and a small sigh. “CCCCCCCRRRAAAAPPPPP!” I moan and reach into my bag and pull out Fos. I crept to the door and slowly cocked back Fos, my hand on the cylinder to make sure it cocked back slowly and quietly. I stepped over Baldy and Toothy, apologizing the entire time, and finally hit the emergency exit. I leaned up against the door and slowly pushed against the door till it cracked a little.   
It opened onto an alley, and at the end I saw a horse drawn cart with a tarp over it. And then I saw three guys standing around the cart, and one was lifting the tarp up and the other was putting Toka in. Then, they all piled in and off they went. Shit.  
Taking a deep sigh, I looked back once down the hall and told myself I was being stupid and irrational, then I went off after the cart. MY STOMACH HURTS!  
-Hour later-  
I leaned up against a post and puked up the udon I had eaten. It did not taste as well going back up as it did going down. I looked up and wiped away the fluids. I was in some residential area about two miles or so away from the restaurant. I followed the damn cart here and it was almost nightfall, nearly lost the thing five times. My legs felt like rubber and this was the third time I’ve thrown up. My stomach bleed a little bit on the way there, and I found out that Kurenai stuffed my wrappings with some weird leaves.  
I didn’t want to even try to begin to understand the leaves, so I just put them back in and wrapped it up tighter than before, and it stopped bleeding a few minutes later. But god is still hurts like hell. The house was surrounded by a eight foot wall all the way around from the looks of things, two stories tall and the walls looked to be a mixture of paper and wood. The house, not the wall, that was all just big logs side by side to each other. I saw the front gate open up and the cart full of three guys, and Toka, still unconscious I think, go inside. Sighing, I silently curse my own stupidity and hero fantasy, I walk off to the side of the fence farthest away from the front gate.   
One thing about houses like these I’ve seen or at least seen types back at home, the fence either doesn’t run full circle, or there’s some hill that cuts a few post short. Or if I am lucky enough and these people are stupid enough, a tree old enough to climb, no such luck. But luckily, it would seem that they ran out of logs, or ran short, and they started cutting them in half, and some of them are rotted through.  
Sighing, I pull off my bag and put Fos in it, then sit down in front of the most rotted looking log, and then I slowly start kicking it, stopping every now and then to listen and see if anyone was coming. I heard nothing but a hollow thwacking noise every few minutes, some crickets and running water. Damn, how late is it? In five more kicks, the bottom portion of the log and some of the surrounding log gave way for a hole big enough for me to walk through. I pushed my bag through the whole to clear away the sharper pieces of wood and then slowly wiggled my way through it, gasping in pain whenever my stomach flexed to much. How the hell am I even doing this? Or better yet, WHY?!  
I finally got through the damn fence and ended up looking into a large zen like garden with a big pond in front of me surrounded by bushes and other greenery. The hollow thwacking noise was a bamboo cup on a axle that had water pour into it and then it overflowed and then fell forward and hit the stone below it. Past the pond was part of the house with a large porch and an open screened room with a large table in the middle of the room. Looked like the meeting room in the first Kill Bill movie with the crazy 88’s. the lights where on and glowed pale yellow everywhere, but so far I couldn’t see anyone come along. I slowly got up and pulled out Fos from my bag and then put the bag over my shoulder and started to slowly creep around the edge of the pond, I was about three feet away from the porch when I heard footsteps. So I did the only stupidly painful option available, I dove for the area under the porch.   
I hit the ground in a side roll and rolled under the porch right as a door was slide open. Fos dug into my chest as I rolled over it, and I had to clamp a hand over my mouth to make sure that no curses got out. I barely breathed and just barely gritted my teeth together in fear of creating noise. People walked out and some came above me to stand on the porch. I felt like screaming out obscenities and in pain as I sat on my back and looked up through narrow slits in the porch. My stomach was on fire and I’m pretty sure I opened it up again. I heard more scuffling and then I heard some muffled high pitch grunts and then someone smack someone.  
“Where you noticed?” Someone asks.  
Someone snorts. “Of course not. Though the little bitch here and her body guards put up a little more fight than expected.” So it’s those guys! Some muffles something and then another smack. Well, I know where Toka is.  
“Good, it seems that hiring you clanless ninja’s was a good idea after all.” GGGGRREEEAAATTT, more ninja’s.  
“When do we get our pay?”   
“As soon as you deliver the message to that old fool, he pays up to make sure that little princess here isn’t harmed and hands over his area.”  
“What if he doesn’t go along with the plan?”   
Someone chuckles wryly. “Oh, he will if he doesn’t want to see his precious granddaughter’s finger in a lovely little box laying on his pillow.” Toka screams again into her gag, another smack. Shit, come on Zack, think damn it. God, I need a distraction. Something big enough to get them away and put Toka in a room and then find her and go out through the fence.  
Wait, what the hell am I thinking?! I should just get the fuck out of here and go back and find Asuma and Kurenai and then let them do their Ninja thing!  
“We should probably cut off a finger to send with the message to show that we mean business.” Someone suggest. Toka screams once again, another smack. GODDAMNIT ALL! I turned over onto my stomach and suppressed a grunt and slowly got onto my hands and knees and began to crawl away from the people on top of the porch in the opposite way.  
Okay, think, think. What do you have on you? Fos, don’t want to waste the bullets. Knife? No, I may need it in a fight. Ironic if I stick someone in the gut with it. Bullets? Don’t have a lighter and it hurts like hell to pull lead bullets out of a casing. Damn it, god damn it. What the hell is left? My Ipod?...... Mother fucker. I reached a corner at the end of the porch and slowly came out from underneath the porch and looked around and back to see if there was anyone. Nothing but darkness. Okay, I have my ipod and my speaker, now all that is required is… bingo! A nice big shrub. I took another quick glance around and… wait! I slid my shoes off and then ran to the bush near the fence. I slowly got down on my hands and knees and dug out my ipod and speaker and connected them together and pushed them into the bush. I picked up my Ipod and mentally went through a list of songs that started off slow and got louder.  
Think, think, think. Ah HAH! The Howling by Within Temptation, it starts off slow and then goes fast. Alright, enough time for me to get the hell back to the porch. I turned up the volume all the way and then found the song and hit play. Within seconds I was on my feet and on the way back to the porch, sticking to the shadows as I went. The music started off melodic, almost barely unnoticeable, but right as I hit the porch the guitar rift started and so did the shouting.  
“YOU IDIOTS!” the first guy yelled at the others who had taken Toka. “YOU WERE FOLLOWED!”  
Then I heard a scuffle and some low whispering. “Look you old shit, we’ll take care of this and our payment. FAN OUT!” then I heard more scuffling and soon people where running across the grass and porch as I started crawling under the porch towards where I began. I had grabbed my shoes on the way and was now where I started out putting them on.  
I listened intently, though partially I was singing the lyrics to the song as well. I heard nothing but faint scuffling and grunting, so I took a chance and put on my shoes and slowly looked around and got out from under the porch. The few people I did see where off in a distance and getting further away, looking for the music source. I hope my ipod survives this ordeal. I looked over the lip of the porch and saw no one in the room and quickly scurried into the house. I brought up Fos as I got closer to the door and looked back at the opening and listened to see if anyone was coming, no one on either end. I quickly slid open the door a little bit and stuck my head out of the crack and saw no one, then I bolted across the hall and quietly slid the door back in place and looked up and down the hall.  
“Where the hell are you?” I ask to no one silently, then comes a lot of scuffling and yelling from my left a ways. I smirk. “Found you.” I whisper and begin to walk on the balls of my feet quietly, kinda hard to do with shoes on, damn, should have left them outside. The hall took sudden right turns multiple times and then branched off slightly, I decided to stick to the main pathway and stop at each corner just in case. I came to some close calls when a few people came by, but they soon went by and I let out a big breath. But finally almost near the end of the song I reached the one final turn and heard some more scuffling. My body felt cool yet hot and I was getting jittery standing at the end of the hall. I felt better than ever, which is weird since I was puking my guts out a little over ten minutes ago.  
“Put her in my room.” One guys says firmly. “Then go and help those damn fools find whatever is making that awful racket!” HEY! Within Temptation is good!   
“I better go off and help.” Another guys says.  
“Fine, just go and turn off that noise, it’s giving me a splitting headache.” Oh, you will be asshole I thought silently as I reached into my bag and clutched ahold of the knife. The minute my fingers brushed the cool metal a whole flood of memories and emotions came to me, then came this flowering sensation of cool power, a hum like electricity running through a wire. Then the song ended and footsteps came closer and closer to me, I silently pulled out the knife with my left hand and with my right I brought up Fos to a fine point.  
I counted the steps as another song started up, What have you done by Within Temptation as well. Right as the first lyric was sung, I pivoted sharply on my right foot and brought up my left hand in a bee line punch upward. A slight jarring feeling went up my arm as I felt the guard of the knife connect with the guys noise, I put more weight behind it and imagined it going through his head, and I started going forward slightly as he went back. I stopped and stumbled to the left slightly to where I was in better view of the hallway and the four guys, minus the one of the floor, as they stood at the end of the hall looking back at me shocked. Toka was with two other guys with spear like things. She looked at me and muffled.  
I pointed Fos down at face of the guy I had knocked over onto his back and smiled at the others. “Hey, wanna see a magic trick? I can make his head disappear!” Then I pulled the trigger once and the bullet entered in under his nose and the back of his head went wide open in a spray of blood, I felt some hit me and my ears echoed with the noise. I stepped past the dead guy and smiled wider. “Now, who’s next?”  
One of the three guys suddenly gets an angry face and starts to charge at me. “FUCKING BRAT!” he bellows. I tense up my legs and crouch slightly as he gets closer. Then right as he’s a few steps away from me, I spring upward in a giant ass jump I didn’t know I could do. I find myself twisting my body around and doing a backflip onto the guys back with my left hand inverted and the blade pressed against his neck. As he goes down with a ooph I slit his throat in a spray of blood and use him as a spring board to do another backflip and bring up Fos. As the world inverts itself, I brought up Fos and pointed it at the other guy and fired off two quick shots and they hit him in the chest.  
It all seemed to go slow motion for me, I could barely believe I was doing this. It was like the beat of some unknown song was driving me. I landed on my feet and then went into a wide circle on one foot and pivoted then jumped with my left foot up. I went flying a few feet and my foot found it’s place in the guys stomach. A slight jolt went through my leg as he went flying back and I had to hop on one foot for a second to balance myself. I smell something along the lines of piss and dirt in the air.  
The guy went flying into a wall and then slid to the floor with his head down in a slump. I smile and turn to face Toka, and my eyes fly open as I see her figure be fuzzy and unclear, and underneath it was a grungy looking guy who was actually taller then her. “SHIT!” I curse and jump to the left as she swings her arm. I see a weird looking knife like the one that was in Baldy and Toothy in her hand.  
“You’ve got some good moves kid.” Not Toka says in a manly voice, and with a pop the Toka appearance disappears and a grungy thirty something man in her place with a large grin. “What village you from?”  
“Neither.” I tell him and bring up Fos and point it at him. “I’m just a good Samaritan. Now, where the hell is she?”  
“Right here kid.” Another gruff voice says. I turn my head and see two more guys in similar dirty outfits as the other guy. Then I see Toka in the taller ones hands with a weird knife in his hand next to her throat. “Now drop them or the girl gets a makeover.”  
I look back at either side of me and grit my teeth. This is the shittiest two sided Mexican standoff I’ve ever seen. If I drop Fos then all I have is the knife. If I drop the knife and shoot Guy 1, guy 2 is more likely to kill Toka and then guy 3 is probably going to gut me. Shit, shit, shit da le shit shit. WAIT! The skull. Okay, that and to many cheesy action movies and replays of The Transporter. I sigh dramatically and slowly grip and ungrip the knife and Fos. “Fine.” I say and hold up my arms parallel to the ground. At the same time, I let go of Fos and the knife, but I quickly pinch the skull on the handle of the knife and clench my hands together and make the skull blade run parallel with my wrist. hopefully they didn’t get a good look at the blade to realize-  
“HEY!” one guys exclaims. Shit. “Where the hell-” I snap my left wrist and let the blade soar towards Guy 2 and he suddenly screams aloud and lets go of Toka. I dive down to the floor and try to scoop up Fos, but Guy 1 is on me and punches me in the face. I hear some more scuffling as my glasses fly off my face, but then Guy 1 lets go of me and goes flying backwards. I hear more scuffles and grunts, and the next thing I know I’m being pulled up to my feet and my glasses are being slid onto my face. And to my happiest surprise, it’s Kurenai standing in front of me.  
“You did well.” She says with a grin. I turn and look at Guy 2 and 3 and see Asuma standing at the end of the hall with his foot on 2’s gut.  
“Sorry we’re late kid, took like 20 minutes for us to actually figure out what the hell is going on.” He looks down at the other guys on the floor and whistles. “But it looks like you had it under control.”  
I just sigh and then lean back against the wall. “Thanks.”


	3. Full moon

I don’t own Naruto, just my OC’s.  
Have you ever had those reoccurring dreams? One time back at school at the lunch table, I sat with other kids that didn’t have any normal definitions of friends so we sat together to stave off loneliness. Anyway, one of the guys at the lunch table started this conversation about reoccurring dreams, his was him flying away while characters from some movie or anime, whatever that was, chased after him. Another girl had this like dream/vision of a subway, she told us it was either just a dream or a vision as a warning. But me and one other girl where the only ones who actually had a reoccurring nightmare, and at the moment I was in it. Well, not so much a dream/nightmare but it was actually a memory, replaying over and over again at least once a month.  
It was the same as always, I was half asleep in my ratty bed that rested on a cheap flimsy metal frame with only wooden slats to use as a box spring. The room was dirty, the walls and ceiling stained dark enough to make a cow hide pattern that practically glowed thanks to the street light that shined through the curtain less window next to the bed. It wasn’t exactly my bed, it was actually my parents bed whenever they came in and slept. Tonight they were going to the ‘mall’, they’re word for going to score from their dealer, or bookie. Whichever one they owed the most money to, or had stuff to give them. It was mid-november and cold, a bad cold that couldn’t be beaten off with the dirty hole ridden blanket on the bed. If I was in my closet I could pile on the coats and go to sleep nicely. But momma said the closet was off limits for a few days to get rid of some pest. I think she means me.  
I could barely hear the footsteps, for some reason I was drowsy yet still awake. Like my body couldn’t move. I know why I couldn’t now, mom had put two sleeping gel capsules in my drink from McDonalds, poked holes in it and squeezed out the gel, the pills that is. I should have known that something was off when they came in with McDonalds and a cake from Baskin Robbins, we barely had money to pay rent, let alone food. Hell, the electricity was only on every other odd weekend. Only reason I didn’t starve was because Miss Chang across the hall gave me leftovers from the night before for lunch. She always had white rice with her food, don’t know why, but I was grateful.   
The doorknob turns and clicks loudly in the quiet room, my drowsy eyes actually open up all the way in shock. I knew what was next, the door banging open. The shadow in the doorway, the smell of cheap beer, boots clunking on the worn wooden floors. My mind racing to the wobbly nightstand next to me as I heard a clink of the-  
“Why do you put yourself through this kind of torture my little cub?” A voice purrs, the words rolling in a melodic tone that held a soft masculinity to it. My eyes watered as the darkness suddenly shattered like breaking glass. It cracked and then fell away in a crumbling smashing noise. The lumpy ratty bed slowly fell away from beneath me, the blanket dissolved away as the drowsy feeling seemed to erode away from my body, allowing me to sit up in wonder.  
I was not longer in the room, no longer in the darkness of my nightmare. Instead, I was in a grassy plain, green and lush nearly two feet high and it seemed to weave and bend like the ocean as wind blew by. Suddenly, leaves drifted down, green and bright. The pattern of growth I couldn’t place. I looked up and stared in wonder as a tree suddenly came into view above me. Large limbs that spread outward instead of upward, lush and full of greenery. Then I saw something out of place sitting in the branch nearest to me, it was grayish silver with spots of black that stuck out. It took me a second to realize that it wasn’t a branch, it was a cat. A big ass cat, IT WAS THE SNOW LEOPARD FROM BEFORE!  
“So you finally wake up cub.” A feminine voice says with a bubbly voice. I turn my head abruptly and sitting in another branch above me is a Cougar. It looks down at me and tilts its head, then it breaks out into a grin. A GRIN FOR CHRISTS SAKE! “Oh, he’s scared.”  
“How cute.” Another one says, a deeper more masculine voice than the first voice. I turn again to see a black panther sitting on the branch to the right of the Cougar.   
Then a cheetah suddenly comes racing through the grace and jumps at me with it’s paws spread wide. “YIIIPPPEEE!!!!” it yells, startling me. Then it crashes into me and slams me into the tree, only it didn’t hurt at all. I blink down at it and it looks up with a wide smile, how the hell can a cat smile! “You’re finally awake!” it yells, then rubs its head against my chin. The fur felt soft and smelled like pine needles and wet earth.  
“Stop it Chiya, you’re scaring him.” Another voice scolds. I look up from the cheetah and see…. A black and white tiger? No, not the albino tigers with black stripes, I mean white stripes with black fur, and glowing red eyes. It’s voice, I think it has a voice. Oh, wait, this is a dream, why the hell am I getting all worked up? It’s voice was more like an old woman, knowledgeable yet calm and composed.  
The cheetah turns to it and stick out it’s tongue. “Lay off Ulla, he’s fine.” He turns to me and grins again. “I’m Chiya, lets play!”  
The snow leopard jumps down from the branch and is suddenly knocking away the cheetah and growling deeply. It’s tail brushes up against my face. “Hands off my cub, Chiya.” It warns. The fur smelled of fresh snow and maple.  
The feminine voice from the cougar laughs. “My Torima, you seem to be attached.” The snow leopard, Torima, growls up at the cougar, but she just laughs.  
“Well what do you expect Karina?” the black panther says. “After all, he did basically nurse the poor boy back from the dead.” Then before I know it there’s a roar sounding loudly, making all the cats cringe slightly.  
“ENOUGH!” the roaring voice says. The cats in the tree jump down onto the ground around me and look out into the grassy fields. The grass seems to part as a large RED lion walks out, the mane around it’s head a bright orange. Walking with it’s head held high it proudly stalks toward us and then stops in front of Torima and stares him down. “Torima, he needs to be introduced. You know the possible outcomes that will happen if he isn’t before tonight.” The lions voice was deep and brassy. Torima turns his head to me and then bows slightly before turning around and slunking to me.   
“Zachariah, Iah.” He says to me softly, then puts his face a few inches away from mine. “You have to listen to what we have to say.” Something came over me, this feeling of euphoria, the need to laugh, the bliss that would come if I played with his fur.  
That’s when I started laughing like a maniac and suddenly launched myself forward at Torima and bury my face in it’s fur. The laughter bubbling out of my mouth as the soft fur covered and brushed my face. it felt cool yet warm at the same time, the two clashing together but the first winning more often than the second.  
“I believe that he needs a more firm hand to guide him for now.” Ulla says.  
I giggle some more and lean back and scratch behind Torima’s ears, he purred lightly but his tail twitched agitatedly. The lion begins to walk forward, but then I wake up.  
I blinked confusingly as I turn my head and see Asuma with his hand on my shoulder in a fuzzy outline. I pat around the futon I was on and soon found my glasses and saw him more clearly. “Huh?”  
“Time to get going kid, need to hit the road.” He says boredly. I sit up and yawn. Weird dream. “Come on, we’ll grab breakfast and then get going.” I only heard the food part and I was out of the futon faster then I should have.  
I stopped and clenched my muscles tightly in expectation of a quick wave of pain, but there wasn’t any. I did the ‘what?’ look and lifted up the bottom of my shirt to look at my stomach and saw that the bandages where still in place with a few leaves poking out. Kurenai said that the sap from the leaves helps heal wounds after last nights little fun time. Stupidly, I think at least, I unwrap the bandages, more and more leaves fall down onto the futon until I hit the end of the bandage and find only a pale scar above my belly button.   
“Huh, well isn’t that a miracle?” Asuma says as he wonders to the door. “Come on, get dressed, I wanna get back home ASAP.”  
That snapped me out of my little pool of thought. “Wait, are you saying that I’m going back home with you?” I ask in disbelief. “And how come this isn’t bothering you as much as it is me?”  
He waves his hand at me dismissively. “Kurenai already said that you were healing fast, besides, if I got weirded out by everything odd in my life, I’d be dead of a heart attack by now. Come on kid, ain’t got all day.”  
I growled at him and quickly found my pants and jacket and then was out the room fully dressed with my bag on my shoulder. Fos, the knife as well as my ipod where in it. They found it last night and gave it to me, thank god. I found Kurenai and Asuma at a table in the lobby area of the hotel sitting down. I quickly came up on them and sat down as well.  
“Good morning.” Kurenai says briskly happy, is that even possible? “How is your wound?”  
“Completely healed up.” I tell her suspiciously.  
She smiles at that. “Well that’s good. Now we can get going to Konoha quicker than expected.”  
That’s when I draw the line. “Look, I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but I’m not going back to your what did you call it? Village? I’m not going back to your village with you guys.” Now that’s when they both pursed their lips and glared at me.  
A waitress came by and plopped a plate of what looked like rice and an omelet on top of it. I look at it, then at them.  
Asuma starts off first. “Look kid, I don’t know what idea you have in your head, but you better get it out quickly. Some people will figure out that you’re not exactly from here, or the other lands, and those that do will come after you-”  
“And the cliché is lovely to hear.” I tell him as I pick up some chopsticks, then wish they actually had some damn forks. I tried to pick at the omelet, but all I did was break it apart. “But I think that I at least want to get a chance to experience that myself and get rid of my childish nature of invincibility before I go crawling to someone for help.”  
Kurenai rolled her eyes and sipped from a glass. “You won’t be crawling for help, it’s more like you’d be safer there-”  
“But what about from the people of Konoha?” I counter as I finally decided to use the damn chopstick as a platform and pick up the omelet by putting them underneath it and holding it on both sides. I managed to take a bite before it slide off. “I mean, I’m some weird ass stranger, I know, language, but I’m not exactly the epitome of your kind of normalcy.”  
Asuma sighs and lights a cigarette. “Look kid, how bout I put in this perspective. If you go out on your own, you’ll be dead within a month.” I didn’t bother arguing, was beyond true for someone who doesn’t even know where the hell he is. “On top of that, you seem to be able to hold a large amount of chakra within you, and your untrained in how to control or maintain. In lay man’s terms, you a risk to everyone around you as well as yourself. Some will take advantage of that and others will put you down.” He then stubbed out his cigarette in an ash tray. “This isn’t a debate kid, it’s a demand and an order. You’re coming with us back to Konoha and that’s that. And don’t give me the same line of I can handle myself and no one can touch me. I’ve heard it enough times form other kids and your defiantly smart enough to know that you can’t be invincible.”  
I glared at him, then pulled my plate up to my mouth and started shoveling in my food. After a minute it was all gone and I nearly coked. I slammed the plate down and glared at him. “FINE!” I barked.  
He rolled his eyes at me and sighed. “And here I thought you were mature enough not to use that tactic.”  
“I’m a teenager, we hate to be wrong and it’s even worse when someone uses facts and logic against us to show that our ideas are stupid.” I counter.  
“He’s got a point.” Kurenai says with a smirk. She raises up from the table and smirks. “We already ate, so lets get going.”  
My eye twitched. “You had this figured out from the beginning.” They smirked and nodded. “Oh that’s just mean and evil.” Then I smirk at them and get up. “You guys are just the type of people I enjoy.” They roll their eyes and we all walk out of the hotel, and right into a crowd of scary muscular guys, an old man, and Toka.  
“Are you the boy that saved my granddaughters life?” the old man asked.  
Toka jumped at me in a tight hug. “That’s right grandpa, this is him.” I felt smothered by the fact that she had a whole eight inches on me.  
“I wanted to thank you boy for helping save Toka from that rat bastard.” The old man said sternly.  
“You’re welcome.” I respond muffled.  
“Thank you for your kindness.” Kurenai says with a bow. “But we must be getting back to our village now.”  
“But you can’t go with my husband!” Toka wailed. WHAT? I pushed away from her and looked at Asuma and Kurenai, they just had big sweat drops on their foreheads and a sheepish look. “Isn’t that right grandpa?”  
The old man nodded. “It is Toka.” He turns to Asuma and narrows his eyes. “I’m sure you understand well enough.”  
“ARE YOU PEOPLE FUCKING MENTAL!” I yelled at them. Toka looked at me shocked and the guys behind her looked pissed. “Look sister,” I say to Toka. “you may have some savior transference crap going right now, but something you should know is that I’m on your side of the fence.” Practically everyone around me fell dramatically face forward at that one. But in a few seconds Toka was on her feet and had my coat gripped tightly in both hands.  
“HOW THE HELL COULD YOU BE GAY?! YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE MY HUSBAND?” she yells. I push her off and glare.  
“Who the hell said that?” I threw back.   
“All the books, the fairytales, the… UUUGGGHHHH! I can’t believe that I let myself be rescued by some limp-”  
“IF you even dare to finish that sentence you’ll find out how limp my wrist is behind my fist!” I warn her.  
“Oh?” she sneers. “And what the hell is some stupid little 9 year old small dicked shit like you gonna do to me?”  
I ignored everything except the age part. “NINE YEAR OLD?! I’m SIXTEEN YOU MOTHER FUCKING PREPUBESCENT FLAT CHESTED BITCH!” I yelled back at her. Needless to say, it went further downhill from then on. We ended up beating the crap out of a few of the guys and then calmly walking off into the eight o’clock sun with a shouting little girl behind us.  
Fast forward three hours later and you’ll find us walking along a dirt road, silent for the most part. We had passed a few more small towns, quite homey for a visitor passing by. Again, more stares at me. Despite the blazing sun, I wasn’t all that hot under the wool coat. In fact, I felt quite cool the entire time, it was nice.  
“So how far away exactly is Konoha?” I ask boredly. I badly wanted to play my ipod to feign away boredom and silence, but it was kinda of rude.  
“We should be there by tomorrow morning.” Kurenai responds boredly. “There’s a town about six hours from here that is frequented by travelers and others like us. So we’ll stop there for the night and then we should be in Konoha by ten in the morning.”  
“Huh, you know this kinda reminds me of a book I read once.” I say boredly to pass the time. Just walking along is getting kind of boring.  
“Yeah, and how’s that?” Asuma asks with as much enthusiasm as me.  
“Well in the book one hundred boys, from like 12 to 18, volunteer to take part in this thing called the long walk, where they continue walking at a speed of 4 miles per hour.”  
“Why do they have to continue walking at that speed?” Kurenai asks.  
“Because if they drop down below that speed they get a warning, if they get three warnings, then they get a ticket.”  
“Ticket?” Asuma asks.  
I pulled out Fos and held it up. “They got shot with something bigger than this, called a rifle. Longer barrel, higher caliber bullet meaning more power and greater range. Soldiers would ride behind them with rifles and shot them down if they got a ticket, basically a way to make sure any symbolic gesture done by the boys would be demoralized. Anyway, the walk went on till there was only one boy left, no stops or rest or bathroom breaks, they just kept on walking till they dropped. Discussing religious and moral values, philosophy… now I’m wondering why the hell I’m even talking about this.”  
Kurenai starts to chastised me on the language, but sighs and rolls her eyes.  
“If they were going to die then why the hell would they even join the walk?” Asuma finally asks.  
“Um… darn it I can’t remember it off the top of my head.” I snap my fingers a few times then it hits me. “Oh yeah, it was because those that end the walk as a winner get the ultimate goal, the ‘prize’. It’s not really said what it is, but it’s supposed to be the ultimate wish granted by the guy who runs the race.”  
We walked about ten more minutes before Kurenai finally just sighs and looks at me. “So what exactly brought on that last little story?”  
I shrugged. “I don’t know, awkward silence, long walk, my brain to mouth filter doesn’t exactly work so I usually just blurt out anything I think.” Speaking of which. “Look, can I just listen to my music so we don’t have to do this all over again?”  
“I take it that that was one of your filter malfunctions?” Asuma asks. I nod my head and pull out my ipod and big headphones. “Isn’t that what you used to distract those men last night?”  
“Yep, don’t ask about it cause I didn’t bother to try to figure out how it really works. It just holds plenty of songs and I can enjoy them all.” Actually I just wanted them to leave me alone for a few hours and let me listen to my damned songs, music can soothe.  
“Go ahead, let us have some piece and quiet.” Asuma says boredly. I gladly obliged them and soon started playing Delta Rae’s Bottom of the river and turned the volume up loud.  
After about five non stop hours of music, some awkward dancing by me that got Asuma and Kurenai to laugh at me, I didn’t care, I needed to dance to the music. My legs where tired and my feet ached, and by god I was hungry. We skipped lunch and it was around four in the afternoon, don’t know why we just didn’t walk the rest of the way to the village after a quick pull over for food.   
“We don’t exactly have to be back right away.” Asuma explains as we finally enter in the town. Bigger than the last one by a lot, but it still had the same feel. “Nothing wrong with spending a few hours lazing around now is there?”  
Kurenai rolls her eyes and starts to look around. “Hmm, could have sworn Guy would be here.”  
“Uh, who’s that?” I ask dumbly.   
She starts to open her mouth but then smirks as a weird cloud of smoke suddenly appears and she just smiles as the smoke clears and standing in its place was a tall man with a wide smirk on his face. A bowl cut hair style that was black with I kid you not a white streak as a reflection in his hair. He wore a green one piece jump suit with a red belt that had the metal plate with the symbol for the leaf village on it. A zipped open flak vest, and oh my god his teeth actually sparkled. I didn’t know whether to die laughing or have a eye twitch moment. “Iah, meet Might Guy, fellow Jonin of Konoha.” I looked down in order to suppress laughter and saw that he had orange… the closest thing I could say would be leg warmers.  
Guy looked down at me and flashed his sparkling teeth and gave me a thumbs up. “The names Might Guy, let the power of youth guide you.”  
I held up a hand and extended a finger. “One second please.” I turned around and bite my tongue hard enough to laugh and cry at the same time, then I took a deep breath and turned around and bowed. “Squire Zachariah, call me Iah.”  
“Guy sensei!” someone yelled, I looked behind Guy and saw a green blur running through the streets with two other less blurry images behind the first one. The blur gets to us first and skids to a stop, and I almost fall over laughing when I see a smaller copy of Guy, with… oh my god how could I not see those big ass eyebrows first? He saluted guy and stood back straight. “Sensei, I have completed the punishment by running around the village 100 times.” He said proudly. My mouth opened and my jaw hit the ground, then he turns to me and gives me an assessing eye.  
“You’ll catch flies that way.” Someone says. I look behind the new guy and see a guy and a girl, each wearing the metal band with the leaf village symbol on it. the girl had her hair up in two buns on the back of her head and wore a… I’ll stick with a Chinese style shirt cause I don’t know clothes except sterotypes of patterns. The guy had long hair with some weird headband style that centered the leaf village symbol on it. the girl was the one who talked, the guy just gave me this weird look which I assume is either disapproval or distaste, but hey you know what they say about assuming.  
“Ah Lee, Neji, Ten-ten,” Guy says proudly then puts an arm around my shoulder and points to me. “Let me introduce you to… uh… what’s your name again?” I nearly fall over on my face, everyone else beat me to it.  
“Just call me Iah.” I tell him for a second time.  
“Hello Iah,” the Guy copy said stepping forward. “I am Rock Lee.” He says stiffly as he bows.  
“Names Tenten.” the girl says in a somewhat bored tone.  
“Hyuga Neji.” The other boy says robotically, he then looks at me oddly again and scrunches up his eyes.  
“So Asuma, what took you so long?” Guy asks as he gives him a weird smirk. “We managed to finish our mission flawlessly and have been here since yesterday.”  
“Right Guy Sensei!” Lee enunciates with a thumbs up. Okay then, this is going to take some getting used to.  
“Blame the kid.” Asuma mumbles through a lit cigarette. “Took too long to get up this morning.”  
Guy turns to me and gives me a weird look. “Why waste your youth sleeping when you could be out enjoying life!”  
“A pleasant dream.” I mumbled, then my stomach roared aloud. I give them all a sheepish grin.  
“I second the motion to get food.” Asuma declares with a smirk.  
“Motion granted.” Kurenai jokes, she turns to Guy and smiles. “Any places you recommend?”   
Two hours later, we were all in full and on the way to a hotel for the night. The sun was close to setting and I was ready to go to bed, weird because it was only six o’clock. My ears where burning, don’t know why cause it was cool out. Ugh, why the hell aren’t my legs tired while everything else was or in pain? My teeth ached slightly, my fingers where twitching wildly and felt sore, and my back was killing me. I stifled a groan and put my hand on my lower back and felt like an old man walking.  
“You alright?” Tenten asks as we walk down the dirt road.  
“Lord if I know.” Guh, what the hell is wrong with me? I put my free hand up to my teeth and tried to see if I could at least find the source of the pain, but I felt a pin prick on my hand and pulled away and found two of my fingers covered in blood. “What the?” I mumbled as the wounds quickly closed.  
“It’s going to be a full moon tomorrow.” Kurenai says absently. I licked the blood off my fingers and leaned back in order to crack mine, didn’t work.   
“Ugh, how far till we get to the hotel?” I ask. Maybe a shower will help.  
“What is wrong, can’t keep up with me or Guy Sensei?” Lee asks.  
“I know I can’t.” I punched myself in the spine and I felt a little bit of pain ease up. “I’m just feeling like crap at the moment.” I closed my mouth and put my hand up to it in pain as my teeth suddenly felt more painful, like something was spreading outward with thorns attached to it. “Owwww.” I whisper, something flies out of my mouth and hits my hand, I pull it away and see that its blood. “Jesus Christ.”  
“What was that?” Neji asks suddenly turning his head to me. I turn my hand and just give him an odd look, he scowls and turns away.  
“Here it is.” Guy announces proudly. I didn’t give a damn what the hell it looked like, I needed a shower and some good nights sleep. Kurenai and Asuma bought two adjoining rooms across the hall from Guy and the others. The rooms where oddly one single and the other double, they gave me the key to the single. Now I am someone who is dense when it comes to some things that others find blatantly obvious, but these two practically had a glowing neon sign above their heads. The only condition to the room was that the door had to be unlocked, I don’t give a damn let me have a fucking room!  
I practically raced up the damn steps to my room and dove into it quickly. Ugh, damn my head is killing me. I closed the door and put my bag onto the bed and unlocked the conjoining room door and then went into the bathroom and started the shower. A wave of pain shot up from my back and I practically fell forward, only stopping myself from falling forward into the tub. I tried to breath but more pain came from my hands, I blinked and then my vision became foggy. More pain came again, causing my body to spasm and my muscles clenched tightly. I felt my hand give suddenly and a loud crack as my ears burned. I sucked in air in a moment of relief, but then the pain came back again. I arched my back and screamed as I felt my skin stretch and tear. I tasted blood in my mouth as my muscles went wild again. my ears felt as if someone was pulling it by hooks, my hands snapped and reformed, the grating feeling sent the worst feelings of oddity up my arms.  
“Iah what’s wrong?” I heard Kurenai ask as she banged on the bathroom door with her fist. I breathed in raggedly and then screamed as I felt more tearing and pain, white hot and stabbing. I heard a loud crash, the door. “Iah, what-” she stops and gasps quickly as I turn my head to her and try to see, the fog faded away with the pain and I saw her standing on the fallen door with a shocked look on her face. Asuma came from the right and the door to the room was opened and in walked Guy, followed by Lee, Neji and Tenten, they all crowed around Asuma and stood into the bathroom. they took a second and blinked, then they all started staring at me open mouthed with wide looks of shock.  
“What?” they all pointed to the mirror opposite of the tub. I couldn’t see from my spot on the floor, so I pushed myself up from the tub, and then noticed that in my left hand was a piece of porcelain, no a chunk. Then I saw my hands, more exactly, my fingers. They where about two inches longer than before, and my nails had extended that same amount, becoming harder, sharper and looking more like claws. I dropped the chunk with a yelp and jumped away from the tub, then I felt something hit my leg. I looked down and for a second saw nothing, then it swung into sight. It was fuzzy, white, silver and black spots, about as wide as my forearm. Then I noticed that it went further back past my leg and rested on the floor behind me. I put my hand on it and it felt soft, the scent of fresh snow and maple came to me, and I felt an odd tingle on my back. I picked up thing and felt something tug on my back, I turned slightly and saw that the thing went further up and along my leg and then curved towards my back.   
I twisted to the side and my eyes slowly got wider and wider, because the closer I got to my back with my hand, the more I saw. My hand went to the back of my pants and I felt up the thing till it reached something smoother, and then I felt my fingers touch my back and a small mound of fuzzy and soft…fur. FUR!? I picked up the thing and tugged, then screeched in pain as I felt it pull my back as well. I looked at it up and down in my hands and my mouth opened up even wider. A…a…..a TAIL!? I looked up at them and started to mouth bits of words, no noise coming out except little gurgles, then I saw a reflection in the mirror. I slowly turned and what first caught me was my eyes, shockingly crystalline blue with a black vertical slit in the middle for an iris. Then my eyes wandered upwards slightly, and then I saw the coup de gras, two angular fuzzy white and black triangles sticking out of my head in basic even shapes opposite of each other. They where white in the middle with black trim around the edges and pinkish color in the middle of the white. I put my clawed hands up to them and gently rubbed them, it tickled, it FUCKING TICKLED!   
EARS?! For the love of god, EARS?! I stood there blubbering into the mirror, looking like a fish stuck on land till I finally turned to them and took a minute to mutter. “Help.”


	4. the joys of war

I don’t own Naruto, just my OC’s.  
You know how people have those annoying little habits that just get you down? Well despite the Chicago reference, I am sick of Kurenai’s little habit of PETTING MY GODDAMN EARS!  
“STOP IT DAMN IT!” I hiss at her as I bat away her hands. I was sitting on the bed in my room waiting for them to try and give me some form of reassuring words, but that was my wish, not what I got. DAMN YOU SANTA!  
“Language.” She says with a false look of annoyance, then she smiles a little bit and reaches for my ears again. I hiss and back away from her suddenly. God, HISSING? I am turning into a cat. “Besides, they’re so cute and soft.” I jumped slightly as a tickling sensation on my back started. I turned around and swiped my hand at Asuma as he suddenly dropped my tail.  
“HANDS OFF PERVERT!” I yell at him feebly.  
Asuma lets loose a sweat drop and looks at me sheepishly. “Really now? A Pervert?”  
“First thing that popped into my mind.” I admitted to him. “Can’t tell you how many times I’ve threatened guys hands I’ve broken cause they wanted to make a joke out of checking to see if I was a guy or not.” They gave me a ‘dafuq’ look and I just shrugged. “Eh, it stopped after I started enforcing my ‘Touch me and I break you’ rule. So many assault charges that brought me.” I look off into the distance and sighed fondly. “Ah, good times.”  
“He’s joking.” Kurenai tells Guy and the others sternly.  
I shrug. “Was about half of it.” Then Neji touches my ears and I punch him in the arm, or at least try to, he dodges it.  
“It would seem that this isn’t just a growth of hair.” He says.   
“Well nah DUH dumbass.” I tell him snarkilly. He glares at me and I glare back.  
“Neji, could you use your byakugan to see what exactly it is?” Kurenai asks.  
“Byakuwha?” I ask.  
“It’s a kekkai genkai that grants users certain abilities.” Lee informed. “One of those abilities granted is that the user can see chakra as well being able to see through most anything.” I look at Kurenai and tilted my head.  
“We’ll get you a book to help explain.” She says.  
“Just hold still and be quiet.” Neji tells me, his tone wasn’t pleasant.  
“The second one is a tall order.” He scowls at me and everyone else rolls their eyes.  
“Just do it so I can get to bed.” Tenten growls. My ears flattened against my head, oh god why? My real ears where gone, checked already, my ears where now located on the top of my head, oh how fun. My tail twitched and flopped slightly to the side, Tenten smirked a little and I cringed at the thought of her cooing.  
“Fine.” I grumbled as I turned and glared at him, I didn’t even think and my tail just happened to swish into my lap. This is annoying. “Ready when you are dumbass.”  
Neji glares at me and then holds up his hands to the center of his chest and does some weird gestures. Wait, those are those hand signs that Asuma and Kurenai told me about. He sticks out his index finger and then his glare becomes harsher and his pale white eyes develop a pupil, or they became easier to see at least, and the veins around his eyes bulge out. I felt something like a blast of air hitting me, like a soft punch as it smacks into you. He looks at me intently and then scans up and down, stopping on the ears and tail during the points in his scan. “This… is quite strange.” He concludes.  
“You’re making it real easy to insult you, you know that right, captain obvious?”   
He attempts to jab a finger into my shoulder, but I’m on my feet faster and have my right hand around his wrist and my left hand pointed at his throat. Then there’s a knife at the back of my neck and multiple others are grabbing parts of my arms and back.  
“Stop it, the both of you.” Kurenai scolds.  
“But its so fun.” I whine as I slowly pull away my arms. Tenten pulls away her knife and looks at me uneasily, Lee gives me an odd look and Guy an uneasy one.  
“I was trying to asses your chakra points.” Neji informs me bitterly as he clenches his hand into a fist. “I was testing to see that if I blocked one then maybe the ears or tail would disappear.” Yeah, and I’m the jolly old queen of England. “Your ears, your tail, even the claws, they’re just chakra forms, silhouettes, yet somehow they are real and physical and are attached to you as if you where actually part cat.”  
“So what does that mean?” I ask impatiently as I started to bounce on the balls of my feet. Ugh, this was too long, so boring. I needed to move, I wanted to feel dirt and leaves on my feet, wind hitting my face. I needed to run. Or dance, dancing sounds fun.  
Neji’s eyes go back to being normal and looks at the Jonin in the room and says. “I honestly can’t tell what is happening. The chakra is… odd.” Everyone gives each other a weird look, then look back at me.  
I twitch my tail in annoyance and then start to actually jump up and down in place. “Well? What the hell am I going to do about these things?”  
Kurenai looks at Asuma and Guy and they nod at her. “It would seem that we need to get to the village as soon as possible.” She announced.   
At first I was like ‘awww man!’ but then I thought about it for a second. It’s four hours to Konoha, that means I can RUN! “GREAT!” I yell happily and grab my bag and put it over my shoulder.   
“How is that great?” Tenten asks as if I’m stupid.  
“I don’t know why, I just want to run.” I tell her as I button up my jacket. Then I think about it. “Um, how exactly am I going to hide the tail? The ears are easy,” I pull up the hoodie attached to my jacket and put it over my ears, they conform to it slightly and stick out as well. “But this,” I pick up my tail and show them. “Is two feet long at most and it’s too bulky to hide under clothes.”  
“Simple.” Tenten says, she steps forward and grabs one end of my tail and wraps it around my waist about one and a half times and then tucks it under it. I looked like I was wearing a fuzzy handcuff around my waist.  
I cock an eyebrow and look at them. “Okay, will this work?”  
“Remember what I said about seeing weird things?” Asuma asks. I nod my head. “There you go.”  
Tenten sighs and heads to the door. “Fine, I’ll go get my stuff.”  
Guy nods his head. “Good, the sooner we get ready the quicker we can get home.” He then turns to me and smirks. “You said you wanted to run, then I suppose a little race then. First one to reach Konoha is the winner. Loser has to-”  
“Not now Guy.” Kurenai says and starts to push him out of the room. “We need to leave as soon as possible, so quit talking and get packing.” He protest something but she pushes him out, Lee follows behind them as Neji gives me one last odd look and leaves as well.  
“Well kid,” Asuma starts. “Think you can create a bigger splash than now?”   
“It’s not my fault!” I protest. “How was I suppose to know that I’d turn into catboy?”  
“The proper term is neko I believe.” Kurenai says as she gets back in.  
“I don’t want to know.” Asuma and I say together. He sighs and heads to his room, Kurenai looks at me and smiles slightly.  
“Are you alright?”  
I gave her the ‘really?’ look. “You know that question gets annoying after awhile when the obvious is staring at you in the face. But since I’m trying to be little less of an ass, no I’m not alright, I’ve been stabbed and killed three people within the last two days, and know I get to chalk up were-cat to my list of things effed up in my life.”  
“Well… lets just say I have something really nice and emotional to say and leave it at that.” She says giving me a pat on the back.   
“Um, what are we going to do about the bathtub?” I ask sheepishly. I left the chunk of what I tore out on the floor next to the door.  
“Same thing we do about the door, tell them to bill it to the village.” She says with a small smirk on her face and leaves the room. I sigh and head out of the room and waited in the hall for them. My shoes felt tight on my feet, I wanted to take them off and just walk around without them, but that will have to wait. Neji and Lee walked out first and we stood and looked at each other while we heard small noises from each room.  
I was shifting to each foot impatiently and Neji and Lee were just looking off into space. Guy and Asuma came out next and again the awkward silence came down upon us as we waited for Tenten and Kurenai. I started jumping up and down in place again and a tic started growing above Neji’s eyes.  
“Will you stop that.” He finally said after five minutes.  
“Sorry.” I tell him honestly. “I just need to move my feet.” Then Kurenai comes out and looks at us weirdly. “UUUUGGGGHHH! Can I take up Guy on his offer of a race?” I ask her.  
“No.” She says smugly.  
“You’re an evil, evil woman!” I yell at her. I started jumping up and down again till Tenten finally walked out. “Thank you lord and hallelujah!” I shout aloud in my best southern Baptist preacher voice.  
“What’s that suppose to mean?” She growls.  
“It means I can run.” I throw back, everyone does an eye roll and we all then go to the front desk and check out. The woman behind the desk gave us all the evil eye when we told her the fate of the door and tub, she says she’s billing the village, then we left.  
I stuck out my arms and felt a cool breeze on my face and whip my hair around slightly. It felt so good. I kicked up my leg and spun around, digging my feet into the ground hopping to relieve the pressure, but that didn’t happen at all. I growled down at my feet and glared at the shoes. I lifted up one foot and did a hop forward as I pulled off my shoe and sock and stuck them in the bag, opposite of Fos and the knife of course, I put my free foot down and sighed in relief as it touched the dirt and earth. Everyone was giving me extremely odd looks as I did the hop scotch dance with my other shoe and did a jumping skip as my feet buried into the dirt. “Aaaahhhhh! This feels great!” I exclaim aloud as I spin around and throw my hands up in the air.   
“People are staring, you realize that right?” Tenten said as she smirked at my antics. I looked around and saw a few people giving me the ‘crazy-looney bin escapee’ look and I just shrugged.  
“Like I care, I just want to move around.” I tell her as I skip along. I narrowly dodged a rock, I needed to move more, or at least faster. “Hey Lee, wanna go for a race?” I ask him eagerly.  
“If you can keep up.” Tenten snorts as Lee looks at me with a smirk.  
“Definitely.” Lee says cheerily. Guy says something about youth and they do the thumbs up pose and Kurenai gives Asuma a wary look.  
“Come on,” I beg her. “if what you guys said was true it’s a straight shot to the village, and besides if anything bad happens I’ve got Fos as backup and Lee as a first line of defense.” I was trying to butter the bowl head up, inflation of ego helps influence plenty of people to go your way. “Besides, he could give me a few pointers on how to fight off ninja if the occasion arises.”  
“I would be honored to teach anyone willing to learn!” Lee says to Kurenai with a salute, chalk one up to being a sycophant.  
“Fine.” She says with a wry look. “Just be careful, I don’t want to have to go to the pound to find you.”  
“That’s mean!” I yell at her and stamp my bare foot down childishly. I feel my ears flatten against my head. She smirked and tried to reach for my head but I ducked and stepped forward and turned to Lee. “Come on, you said you wanted to teach me? So, show me some pointers.”   
“Alright you two.” Guy says happily as he steps forward. “Line up at the stone and I will count you down. First one to-”  
“Can we just make it to he wins when I double over and call it quits?” I ask as we both line up at the stone. “I can already tell you that one.”  
“Where’s your youthful spirit and confidence?” Guy protests.  
“Drowned out by hamburgers and a cynical sense of bad realistic sarcasm.” I tell him as I strap down my bag and tighten it up as possible and got into a runners position with my hands on the ground and my feet behind me poised to run. “Come on and start before I feel the urge to fall asleep in a tight corner.”  
“ALRIGHT! I WON’T LOSE!” Lee shouts and gets in the similar position beside me.  
Kurenai sighs as Guy flashes a smile and stands on the rock on the side of the road. “On your marks… get set… GO!” And we took off.  
-some time later-  
The wind stung my face in a blissfully cold bite as I took strides and got in front of Lee. My feet were pleasurably numb as they hit the dirt over and over again for the millionth time. Lee chuckled and huffed and caught up to me. Sweat was on both of our brows as we attempted to outrun each other. Neither of us now how long we’ve been running without a break or anything. The trees beside us blurred into one continuous film strip, the night air held a refreshing burn as I sucked in gulps of air. I took one more giant bound as Lee took one as well and then both our legs tangled up and we went bowling over ass followed by tea kettle. After coming to a grating stop we both stared up dazed at the night sky on our backs, my arm pinned under his head with my leg at some odd almost painful angle. Then we started laughing and untangling ourselves.  
“I would declare this as a draw.” Lee says with a laugh as we sit down on the road and continue laughing.  
“Definitely, have to say though, that was fun.” I say, then sigh and laugh down on my back and giggle a little bit. “So, how far away from the village do you think we are?”  
Lee looked around with quick jerky movements with a hard look fixed. “I would say a little more than an hour away, HHMMM, I wonder how long we ran?”  
I smirk and sit up and unsnap the buckles on my bag. “I think I can help with that.” I pull out my ipod and hit the pad and saw the clock, 10:47 p.m. I turned it to him and showed him the lock. “I’d say a little more than two and a half hours, give or take ten minutes or so.” I quickly put my ipod back into my bag and sigh and jump to my feet and stretch my arms till they pop. My ears twitched under my hood and I pulled it back off and sighed as they started twitching and reacting to the cool night air. The tail unwound itself and started lazily twitching around swinging back and forth.  
Lee started laughing at me and I just glared at him, I could feel the ears laying down on my head. Then he stops and looks at me weirdly. “When did you grow a beard?”   
“Huh?” I put my hand on my chin and feel itchy coarse hair on my chin. “What the hell?” I look down at my hand and see hair on the back of my hands that wasn’t that big of a concentration before. “UH…”  
“I think we may need to get to the village now.” Lee concluded as he got to his feet. “It may just be a side affect of.. of… this.” He said motioning to the ears and tail.  
I pull up the sleeve of my arm and blanched when I saw that the hair was growing on my arm as well in a white and black spotted pattern, it wasn’t as definite as the pattern on the ears or tail, I could actually see my skin under it, but still you could see it. I brush my fingers along it and shiver when it feels like the fur on the tail. “Do you have a flashlight?” I ask him worriedly.  
He shakes his head no. “What about that thing you had out a little bit ago?” I facepalm and pull out my ipod and hit the pad to light up the screen.  
“What’s the color of my beard look like?” I ask him worriedly as I put it up to my face. his eye’s widen in shock and I get even more worried.   
“I think you may already now my answer.” He says confirming my worst nightmares.   
“So the beard has the same pattern as my ears and tail then?” he nods and I groan and pull away the light and his eyes widen once again. “What is it this time?”  
“Uh, your hair.” At that point I just fall sideways and lay down on the ground in disbelief. “Oh come on, it’s not all that bad.” He says trying to be comforting.  
“How the hell is this not bad?!” I whine. I heard something faintly like whispering and I got up quickly. “Did you hear that?” then the night sky starts to shimmer and a weird looking haze starts to come from the trees around us and covers the road.  
“Hear what?” Lee asks as he looks around, then when he turns to me he jumps back and gets into a fighting stance. “Where did you go Iah?” he asks.  
“What the hell are you talking about Lee I’m right here.” Lee looks around and glares up the road and he starts to run away. “Lee, where the hell you going man?” I ask as I run after him.  
“Iah, where are you going?” Lee asks as he runs ahead faster.  
“I’m right behind you Lee, what are you talking about?” then something comes flying out of the tree line and at Lee. I jump at Lee and wrap my arms around his legs and we both go down as the object grazes a few strands of hair off of Lee’s head and then I hear a hollow thunk. Lee suddenly jumps up and spins around with a leg stuck outward in a roundhouse kick, I stick to the ground and watch as Lee glares around.  
“Show yourself!” he orders aloud.  
“I’M RIGHT HERE!” I yell at him, then I hear someone whisper something else and the ground starts to shake. I don’t remember jumping away but something burst out from the ground and Lee is soon covered by… vines?   
“Genjutsu?” Lee asks shocked like as he tries to move his arms. Someone snickers aloud and a group of people step out from the tree lines and a giant pod like thing sticks out of the ground and opens up and some guy steps out of it.  
“Good work Kurama.” One of the guys says to the one that stepped out of the pod. I crouch low and quickly pull out Fos and point it at the pod guy.  
“Let him go asshole or I’ll blow a hole in your head.” I growl lowly. The air was getting colder, a more brisk chill running around, I saw one of the guys in the group shiver and another shift in place. There was about 14 of them in total that I could count being visible. I sniffed the air and smelt piss and blood and bad dirt. Then Guys number 1,2 and 3 stepped out in front with some other guy next to them. He looked older and a little more experienced than the others around him, I guess he’s the in charge guy.  
His eyes widens a little when he sees me, most likely the ears and tail, then they narrow and he sneers. “Is this the brat that screwed you guys over? A fucking kitty cat?” he laughed cruelly and then sighed and shook his head.  
“Th..that’s him boss!” Guy 1 yells at him.  
“But he didn’t have ears last time.” Dipshit number 2 says dumbly.  
“Or the tail.” Stupid 3 chipped in.  
I roll my eyes and stand up. “Nah shit ya dumbass’s. How the hell did you three dipshits get out? Weren’t you all in jail last time I saw ya’ll?”   
Boss guy stepped forward and snapped his fingers and plant guy put a knife up to Lee’s throat, he stilled and glared off intently at nothing. “Well, the authorities found a few, minor complications with detaining my men.” He says with a smirk.  
“So you killed him?” I ask confused. Then I shrug and scratch my head with the cylinder of Fos. “Man, I should have just killed you three, poor bastard probably didn’t see it coming.” Plus we wouldn’t be here at the moment anyway.  
“Actually he met the butt end of a few hundred Ryo.” Boss guy said boredly and shrugged his shoulders. “Would have been messier to just kill him.” He then smirks wide and flashes a hungry look at me. “But you kid, you cost me some big money with your little ‘good Samaritan’ act. You know that? Guess we’ll just have to take it out of your hide.” I felt something like a prick at the back of my neck, and then a rushing noise from behind me, then I was standing up in a tree looking down at myself getting stabbed in the back by a guy with a big knife.  
“What the hell?” I whisper. The wind around me rushes about and swirls in the tree, a harsh but comforting bite of a sudden chill. I look up and see the snow leopard, Torima laying down in the branch above me. he looks at me with a solemn look and my ears flatten and my tail curls around my leg.  
“You need to listen to those who wish to help more often cub.” He says almost scolding like.  
“Did you do all of this?” I ask him, motioning to myself and the weird skewered look alike me.  
He nods and turns his head at the look alike. “We attempted to explain to you last night, but alas a dream only last so long. I am partially responsible for your condition now, the others are as well, but as for the clone, I merely just directed your chakra flow and helped you summon an clone, an ice clone to be exact.”   
“Ice?” I ask, then look down at skewered me and see that it no longer had color or definition, it was now just a ice sculpture with a bunch of cracks running up and down around it from the originating point in it’s chest area. The group act surprised and immediately went on the defensive and scanning the area.  
“Yes, ice, after all, that is my element, and at this time for the next day it is yours as well. I will explain more, but for now I suggest you take care of your new friend.” Torima says, and then poof, he’s gone in a cloud of frost. I pursed my lips together and my tail twitched in annoyance , seriously?  
I hear something tighten up and I duck down and then a knife sinks into the tree branch above my head. I pull up Fos and turn to them and fire on reflex and hit a guy in the leg. “Nice try dumbasses, wanna try again?” the guy I shot screams aloud and falls over with his hands on his leg.  
“IT BURNS! IT BURNS!” he yells.  
“Dafuq?” I ask, then my eyes widen in shock as a blue and white flame seeps out of the hole in his leg and spreads outward along his leg and up his arm quickly enough, he screams louder as it reaches his shoulder and then stops there, but the flames that went down to his feet connected to the ground and it spread outward as well about half a foot, getting his other foot and the elbow on his other arm as well, then it stopped and disappeared. In place where the flames burned was covered in crystalline ice, I could see dirt underneath the area around the guy, but the man’s arms and leg was completely ice casts with a few minor pieces of clothing you could see. ‘Toketsu-en, freezing flame if you would.’ I hear Torima whisper around me in the air. I look at Fos and see that the blued worn metal work was now a actually pale blue on it.  
The guy with the frozen limbs attempts to pull away his frozen foot with a crazed look on his face, a mixture of disbelief crashing against pain and reality. He tugs away hard enough and a breaking sound erupts and the guy flies backwards slightly leaving his left foot and lower right foot behind attached to the ground. he laughs weirdly and turns over to his right side and another breaking sound and he screams and rolls away and I see his leg and his arm break away and hit the ground and turn to frost.  
“Huh?” I say aloud with a satisfied nod, then I smirk and jump down and land in a crouch. Pulling up Fos in one swift move and firing at the ground a foot in front of boss guy, it erupts in flames and spreads a little more than half foot away but goes up about a foot and a half high, then it stops and in its place is an ice sculpture gleaming perfectly in the night. “Two bullets gone, six more left in the gun with plenty of more left in my bag, I suggest you all either run away with your tails between your legs or kiss your asses and your heads goodbye.”  
The guy on the ground started screaming and thrashing again, then Boss man glared at me and his wrist snapped and then a knife was embedded in thrashing guys throat, silencing him finally. “Nice tricks kid, but we’re not leaving till we either get our payment, or you head on a stick.” He snaps his fingers and everyone pulls out weapons and starts forming hand signs.  
I dodge left as one guy throws some knives and another guy runs at me and attempts to stab me with a bigger knife, I wait for the last second and side step him, then bring up Fos and put it up to his neck and fire. The bullet goes in under his ear and a surprised look stays on his face as blood trickles out of his nose and then the blue white flames jump out of the wound and encase his entire head and travels down his neck. I kick him low in the stomach and do a back flip, he flies back into another guy and crumbles into large chunks of ice as the other guy gets knocked backwards. Another one appears behind me and I let myself crumple to the ground as he slashes at me, I shot him and a log pops in place in a poof of smoke and ices over and falls to the ground and breaks into a million shards.  
Getting back up to my feet I bring up Fos at the plant guy and he grabs ahold of Lee’s head, bends it backwards and then places a knife at his throat. Lee’s eyes lose the glossy look he had before and then he’s looking around shock like before he settles in on me. “Iah, what is happening?”  
“Oh, nothing much.” I say boredly as I wave around Fos a little. “I foiled some of their nefarious plot of theirs, they’re pissed and now want revenge and yadda yada yada and all that jazz.” I shrug and point Fos back at plant guy. “Don’t worry though, I’m sure they’ll be dead in no time.” I took a mental count as some of the other guys started rearranging themselves around. I had four bullets left and about 13 guys to get rid of. Sighing I pulled out the knife from my backpack, stumbling slightly with the flap.  
Boss guy growled and snapped his fingers, and guy 3 from last night came forward and handed him a bundle, boss guy unwound it and then pulled out two brass knuckle type objects with three knifes sticking of the folds between each knuckles, kinda like wolverines claws. “Pretty smart mouth on ya brat, guess we better beat it out of ya?”  
I smirk and lower Fos. “Sure, then how about I even up the playing board.” Then I was flipping back in the air and aiming at four guys behind me, I smile and pull the trigger, adjusting for aim between each shot, and all four guys stare blankly forward as bullet wounds erupt in their chest, shoulder, forehead and stomach. They fall forward slowly as the flames spread outward, and they all broke into pieces as they hit the ground, the guy with the stomach wound broke in half and as I landed on my feet behind him, I saw his lung and heart through the glass like ice beat a few times, and then died. I looked as the guys eyes bulged as he sighed one last time in a high pitch and his limps twitched, then he died. Looking up I put Fos back up in my bag and shift the knife into my right hand and look at boss guy and Lee with a serious expressionless face. “Nine of you left, who goes first?”  
There were four guys, two on either side of me that moved away slowly as they stared at their fallen comrades. Lee looks at me shocked and I feel my tail twitch slightly and then boss guy starts to laugh. When he gets done he slides on one knuckle claw. “Gotta admit kid, its been a long while since I’ve seen someone as heartless as you. Kill your enemies and watch them die out slowly and not even blink or bat of an eyelash. Kinda gets me excited.” Then he’s gone in a flash, a hole in the ground where he once was standing. The others all created hand signs and then they were gone as well except for the plant guy who created another sign and then a wall of vines sprung up and surrounded him and Lee.  
I crouched down low and pulled up the knife and then heard a slight rumbling below me, and then a clawed hand shot out from ground below me and nicked my knee as I rolled away at the last second. I lashed out with the knife, and felt it deflect off something as I got to my left leg on the end of the roll and pushed off the ground with it. I look back as I land on the ground away from the claw and see boss guy standing up now. “What the hell are you, some kinda mole?” he sneered at me and then was gone again. I breathed and concentrated on listening for the rumble of the ground, and soon found it coming for me. “You know I’m glad you’re the kind of mole that digs around in the ground.” I say, then step back calmly as the claw shoots out of the ground, then I grab his wrist and cut it with the knife and for good measure I kick it at the joint and pull him fully out of the ground. “Cause it sure is a lot easier to kick your ass then convert grams to moles in chemistry.”  
He screams aloud as he comes to the surface, and then the façade of boss guy melted away and instead I was holding up guy 2 form last night, a patch over his right sinus cavity on his face showed that it had been bleeding for a little bit of time. “Huh?” I ask as I kick him away from me a few feet. “What the hell are…. Oh now I get it.” I look around and try to find boss guy but only see vine pod, it bulged slightly and I heard a hrmph from it. “It’s like that log thing huh? When I hit you, you substitute one of your men for you.”  
“Very good.” boss guy says from nowhere. Then seven boss guy’s pop out of the ground and look at me. “But it can also work as a clone technique as well, they now my moves and can mimic them.”  
He then disappears again and two of his copies jump at me and swipe with their claws. I duck one and stab him in the stomach with the knife and slash at the other one with the nails of my hand and graze his stomach slightly. that one grunts and moves away but the other one with my knife in his stomach tries to stab me with his claw. I step towards him and under the claw and smirk. “My first kiss went a little like this.” I sang smugly as I leaned in close and made a kissing noise. “And tttwwwiiissttt.” And then I twisted the knife 90 degrees and pulled up on it. blood soaked my hand as his stomach opened up and he made a gurgling noise, then boss man went away and another faceless lackey leaned onto my shoulder. I pulled out the skull knife from the handle and twisted around and snapped my wrist, it went flying and buried into another boss mans eye. He screamed and guy 1 was standing in his place.  
I pulled out the knife and stepped away as lackey fell to the ground and faced the four other boss guys on the surface. “Well, there’s six of you guys left, two are out of the picture at the moment, so, who wants to run and who wants to die next?”  
“You do kid.” I hear boss guy mumble, my eyes open wide and I feel a pain in my tail, I yelp and turn bringing up the knife. Boss guy catches the knife in between two of his claw blades and twists and the blade snaps almost at the guard. I bring up my knee and he jumps back and off my tail.   
I hiss and my ears flatten against my head as I pull up my tail and attempt to smooth away the pain as I glare at boss guy and the knife. “Well, Asuma did say it was cheap metal.” I grumbled.  
“Well kid, what are you gonna use now? You threw away your other knife and you said you had more of those… bullets?” Boss guy taunted at me. “Well, you better get them out, but I wonder how long that will take hmm?” about fifteen seconds if the flap wasn’t buckled once and everything wasn’t jumbled around. “You scared yet brat? Are you ready to beg for your life?”  
The wind picked up again and frost began to appear around us in a midnight shimmering wave. Soon Torima was standing besides me and all the boss guys gasped. Torima looked up at me boredly and nuzzled my hand with his head. “Things seem to be going swimmingly for have they not?” he asks amused.  
I shrug indifferently. “Meh, it’s really up for grabs I guess, but I think I may be at a loss at the moment.” I tell him and show him the knife and it’s broken glory.  
He gives me a lazy yawn and does a cat like smirk. “Oh, but you already are capable of fixing that, all you need is a few words of encouragement.” He then blew out a sigh and a gust of frost and snow whipped around us all. “You can do anything, just let us guide you.” He says cryptically as his tail brushes up against mine. I shiver as something rushes up my spine and then my left hand begins to move and then I raise my right arm up with the blade and my left hand hovers over it, points my middle and pointer finger skyward and then flattens out my hand over my right one, and then I feel it, power. “Say it cub, say the name.”  
“Summoning technique: Shimo ha.” I pronounce, and then bring my left hand away in a flourish of movement, and the frost and snow around me collects underneath it and left in its wake is a gleaming flat ice blade of more than two feet long. I stare at it in awe as I turn my hand over and feel the comforting chill run up and down my hand. “Wow.” Is all I can say. Then I feel a prick on the back of my neck and I spin Shimo ha around my finger by the guard and bring it up and feel it connect. Turning my head I saw a faceless lackey behind me with Shimo ha in his gut, a look of horror and surprise on his face, I smirk and spin around, pull out Shimo ha and bring it down on his head after I rotate it again. it cleaves through the right side of his head and a sliver of his right shoulder goes flying away, but there wasn’t any blood.   
He gasped and collapsed to his knees as his skin turned blue and then he fell over. I heard Torima purring and when I looked back I didn’t see him, only the five boss guys. I sigh and cock my hip to the side and put one hand on it. “Well then, where were we?” then I’m at guy 1 and I grab the skull knife and pull it out, blood goes flying with a little bit of go. “I’ll take that back.” and then I behead him quicker before he could actually utter a word or scream. I turn to the guy a few feet away from me and smile cruelly, he whimpers and turns around, but I’m on him in a second and bury the skull knife in the back of his neck and twist it. I let go of the skull knife and put my nails on his throat, dig in, and then pull away sharply and grab the skull knife quickly as his body drops and turns to into faceless lackey again. I turn to the others and see only two boss guys, the other ones gone. “Well, four of you guys now, who’s next?”  
Something burst out of the ground behind me and I bend over backwards till my ears touch the ground, then I spin Shimo ha around near the guy as he swipes with his claws, it cuts off his hand and I stop it and turn it to where the blade is facing him, and then drive it home into his face. it cuts into his mouth and exits out directly behind it, I twist it and snap my wrist, and half of his head is hanging free. I lay down and roll away, then I roll backwards on my back slightly, stick up my legs and twist them, then I jump forward on my feet and grin. I stare down at the body and see it’s another faceless lackey. “Alright then boss man, that only leaves you and dipshit number three.” I tell him.  
Boss guy in front snarls as boss guy behind him gags and backs away. “YOU LITTLE SHIT! YOU RUINED EVERYTHING!” he yelled at me. I smirk and twitch my tail in a wide arc.  
“Who, moi?” then I laugh darkly and run at them, spinning Shimo ha around to where I’m holding it like a sword and bring it back ready to strike. Boss guy in front disappears while boss guy in back turns to run, I duck low and swing at his legs, they severe and go right, he goes left and lands on his face. I stop, spin, and then bring it down on the back of his neck and twist, he stops moving.  
“Little bastard!” boss guy hisses as guy 3 appears pinned by my blade.  
“Hey, I know my father!” I yell at him as I jump away from the body and avoid a strike from the ground. “Unfortunately.” I add beneath my breath in pitiful admittance. I then bring down Shimo ha in attempt to end this, but he brings up both of his claws and catches them between two of the blades and pulls apart on either side, making my attempts to move Shimo ha moot.  
“SHUT UP!” he yells at me, then raises his leg and tries to kick my, I raise my effortlessly and block it, then do it a few more times. “JUST DIE ALREADY!” he yells again and pulls his claws to him, me along with it.  
Shit, I’m never going to get anywhere at this pace. ‘Blizzard’ The wind whispers softly, it sounded like Torima purring. Huh? ‘Say it’ “Whatever you say, BLIZZARD!” I yell, then pitch forward as Shimo ha disappears in a flurry of moving snow and frost. I jump back as boss guy swipes at me with his claw, and then the night gets blacked out as a torrent of snow and frost cover up the road in a black whipping mess. ‘Concentrate, see what your enemy cannot’ the wind whispers again. “Fine.” I huff annoyed, then I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and then open them. Some of the snow blasts away from me, and the darkness wasn’t so dark, in fact it was quite clear to me. and then I saw boss guy swiping madly around him in an attempt to find me. “Hmm, well take what you get and all.” I say and bring up… oh wait Shimo ha is gone… but Fos isn’t!  
I open up my bag and drop down the broken handle and skull knife into it and pull out Fos and fish around for a moon clip, then find it. I keep an eye on boss guy as I hit the cylinder catch and pop Fos open, the shells get pushed out and clatter to the ground, boss guy stops and then whips his head around. “WHERE ARE YOU?!” he shouts. I snap close Fos and then I calmly walk around him as he attempts to find me with sound, the wind picks up and starts to howl. “COWARD!” he yells again.  
I finally leap forward when his back is turned and shoot him in the back of his knee’s. he goes down and attempts to bring around his claws, but I put Fos against the back of his skull and dig it in. the wind suddenly stops and the snow falls to the ground, the moon is clear and shows the dead bodies littered around us. “See you in hell asshole.” I tell him, his breath hitches and he starts to shout, then I pull the trigger and his head rocks forward and he hits the ground as the flames sprout. A crash comes from behind me and I turn to see plant guy come flying out of his frost covered vines with Lee riding his chest. They stop a few feet away and plant guy passes out and Lee looks at me triumphantly smiling, then he looks around and his mouth drops open. “What took you so long?” I ask him.  
“Iah… what have you done?” he asks in shock as he stares at the bodies. My ears twitch and I hear a sudden rustle of leaves, and before I could move my arms where being pulled apart by chains wrapped around my wrist and the same treatment to my ankles. More and more chains burst out from the trees and wrap around my arms and body and a few people in grey and black militaristic style outfits with masks on their face, some have swords in hands or on their backs.  
“Well isn’t this a fine kettle of fish.” I say wryly.


End file.
